As the 100th Congress begins a new year of work, it immediately faces an economic dilemma that is agonizingly old: what to do about the monstrous and dangerous U.S. deficit. Despite all efforts in years past to control it, the gap between federal spending and revenues grew to a record $221 billion in fiscal 1986. This week, as President Reagan sends Congress his 1988 budget, the annual battle over the deficit gets under way. Behind the barrage of statistics and beyond the parade of partisan interest groups fighting for bigger shares of the federal pie, the issue at stake is, quite...
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