Needed: top-to-bottom restructuring.

While almost everybody in Washington, from Pres. Clinton to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, continues to talk about "reinventing" or slimming down government, The Heritage Foundation has offered a comprehensive and detailed plan for actually doing so. According to budget expert Scott Hodge, it would balance the Federal budget by the year 2000, two years earlier than would have been required under the balanced budget amendment, while providing $152,000,000,000 in tax relief to families with children, business, and the elderly; end corporate welfare; close down obsolete and wasteful programs; strengthen core programs that are legitimate functions of government; and transfer functions that "are not proper Federal activities" to the states or the private sector.

To promote economic growth, the Heritage budget plan calls for cutting the effective capital gains tax rate in half; allowing businesses the equivalent of writing off capital investments in the year in which they are made, rather than stretching out the deductions; and creating new "Individual Retirement-Plus Accounts" to provide tax-free income upon retirement (though contributions to such accounts would not be tax-deductible).

Social Security would not be touched. Medicare, though, would undergo major surgery, offering to retirees a variety of medical plans and choices, similar to those enjoyed by Federal employees and members of Congress under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

Changes and cuts in the foreign-aid program would result in savings of $10-14,600,000,000 over five years. However, in keeping with the Heritage Foundation's view that the first priority of the Federal government is to defend the nation and secure U.S. interests abroad, defense spending would be maintained at current levels, adjusted for inflation. This is about $130,000,000,000 more than the Administration has called for over the next five years.

Heritage vice president Stuart Butler indicates the plan would allow U.S. taxpayers to spend far more of their own money, rather than sending it to Washington for bureaucrats to allocate. "The public realizes that the Federal government is too expensive, mired in debt, and does a poor job of carrying out its core functions, while doing many things it shouldn't do. They want this to stop. That was the message of both the 1992 and 1994 elections. The Clinton Administration has proposed nothing that would change fundamentally the way government works -...