Where the money goes:

...That's not so surprising: gloomier predictions would mean that Congress would have to come up with more revenues (a.k.a...

...Last year's budget warfare raged between the White House and Congress almost until Christmas...

...Unfortunately, a "tidier'' budget process isn't necessarily a better one...

...In an election year, chances are good that Congress will vote for buses in their neighborhoods rather than a station in outer space...

...Without a restructuring of our tax system and a reordering of our national priorities, we are left with a future held hostage to the deficit, and a budget that's incapable of responding to basic human needs...

...Year after year, the nation's policy-makers lower the deficit artificially-through numbers games and phony economic assumptions...

...In the same law designed to control Nixon's practice of "impounding" money, Congress also established a budget timetable, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO), powerful budget committees in each body, and the staff and computers to go with both...

...And among the programs slated for reductions, some-mass transit, rural housing, and community development grants-were proposed to make room for a NASA space station...

...The programs the president says he wants eliminated include some, such as the Economic Development Administration, Work Incentive Program, Urban Development Action Grants, Small Business Administration loans, and subsidies for Amtrak, able to defend themselves and not as basic to survival as welfare and Medicaid...

...That's too high a price for efficiency...

...NANCY AMIDEI Nancy Amidei has written frequently on poverty, hunger, and human services issues in these pages.s in these pages...

...That's worth a lot...

...Unlike every other year of the Reagan presidency, this year advocates won't have to spend scarce energy and resources fighting for the survival of benefits like legal services or food stamps...

...14 billion will come from new taxes...

...some education programs...

...That means almost 85 percent goes to those items alone...

...We won't see the usual dispute between Congress and the White House over economic forecasts...

...Mind you, this budget has its share of bad news: it includes budget increases for the super-collider, Star Wars, and the contras, along with cuts for a variety of programs providing energy assistance, library aid, a variety of health-related efforts, refugee assistance, and grants to cities, social services, child-abuse prevention, and other special needs...

...For those who work with and care about low-income people, the best news in the budget is found between the lines...

...and "worker readjustment...

...taxes), and more programs to cut-a choice it is not likely to make as voters head for the polls...

...dealing with the drug problem (enforcement, education, and treatment...

...Since then, the budget submitted to Congress each year by the president is only the opening salvo in an increasingly rancorous debate...

...On February 18,1988, when the president officially sent Congress his FY 1989, $1.1 trillion budget, it was already clear to all concerned that this year the process would be different...

...Congress and the White House can-and will-still argue over the details, but the broad outlines of the budget were settled in December: growth in military spending is slowed...

...The simple fact that the president's wish list of programs to eliminate (seventeen-down from forty or fifty last year) or drastically cut (seventeen) is shorter, helps low-income advocates...

...While there's something to be said for having Democrats and Republicans alike eager to settle the budget quickly in the form of thirteen appropriations bills, last-minute, catch-all spending bills are a poor way to do legislative business...

...That's largely because FY 1988's eleventh-hour budget compromise covered two fiscal years, 1988-89...

...Like the presidential candidates, the White House seems eager to appear more ' 'compassionate,'' so it's possible to see budget increases for items such as AIDS (research, education, and treatment...

...Among the most perverse reductions are those related to housing-an area that cries out for more, not fewer, federal dollars...

...Until the mid-seventies, however, the White House actually had the upper hand because it was the only one with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB), able to develop a federal budget...

...It's worth bearing in mind that the engine driving this budget remains a bloated military-one that now consumes roughly half the general tax revenues coming into the Treasury-and a deficit that absorbs roughly one-third...

...BUDGET'89 WHERE THE MONEY GOES GUNS & INDEBTEDNESS A basic rule of the federal budget process is that the president proposes, but the Congress disposes...

...Normally that's good for several weeks' wrangling, but this year Congress shows little interest in challenging OMB's somewhat rosier predictions for economic growth, low interest rates, or the size of the deficit, even though the predictions of its own CBO are less optimistic...

...The final catch-all spending bill was signed on December 22, three months into fiscal year 1988 (and incorporating basic agreements worked out on-the budget for FY1989...

...Congress finally got its own budget-making capacity during a Nixon presidency weakened by Watergate...

...and "non-defense discretionary spending" (domestic spending apart from trust fund programs) is to be largely spared further cuts...