This budget is no exception. At various points in the piece, the government proclaims its rigorous determination to balance the budget, cut spending, hold the line on taxes, and end handouts to business. Yet what we get instead is back- pedalling on deficit reduction, looser spending, higher taxes and unending corporate welfare.

Start with the big picture. A year ago, in its February, 1995 budget, the government forecast the deficit for the current fiscal year, 1996-97, at $24.3- billion. However, it stressed that this was based on extremely conservative economic assumptions, even leaving aside the $2.5-billion the Finance Minister, Paul Martin, keeps in his pocket for contingencies. "The deficit, in 1996-97, could be below $19-billion," it crowed, based on private sector forecasts that used more optimistic assumptions about interest rates and economic growth.

We are now arrived at 1996-97, and the deficit is still forecast at $24.3-billion, or $21.8-billion if you drop out the contingency reserve. Yet the most optimistic private forecaster could not have foreseen the 300-basis-point drop in interest rates of the past year. The cost of interest on the public debt is accordingly almost $3-billion lower than forecast: $47.8-billion versus $50.7-billion. So how come the deficit isn't $3-billion lower?

True, the economy did not grow as fast as advertised either. So $2- billion of the debt-interest windfall was eaten up compensating for lower- than-forecast tax revenues. And the other $1-billion? No mystery there: they spent it. Program spending this year, for all the talk of "staying the course," will actually be $1- billion higher than forecast a year ago: $109-billion versus $107.9-billion. Yea though they walk through the shadow of the valley of a $600-billion debt, the Liberals will not cut the deficit a nickel faster than they have to.

Or when pressed, they raise taxes. The budget very carefully boasts it contains "no tax rate increases," which is very carefully true. But tax increases there certainly are. The federal government's take from the economy will continue its inexorable rise, to 16.8 per cent of GDP in fiscal 1998, up from 16.3 per cent in fiscal 1994. Had federal revenues merely risen in line with the economy - that is, had Mr. Martin not raised taxes in each succeeding budget - they would today be $4-billion lower than they are.

Notwithstanding this enormous tax increase, a balanced budget is still nowhere in sight. The government resolutely refuses to look more than a year ahead at a time, leaving the deficit dangling at $17-billion (or $14- billion, minus Mr. Martin's mad money of $3-billion for that year) in fiscal 1998. The most the Finance Minister will allow is that program spending might decline another $500-million the following year, which would suggest a deficit of about $6-billion in the last year of the government's mandate.

This is disappointing, to say the least. It's particularly irksome, in view of the vast acreage of subsidies and tax breaks left untrimmed. The same government that lectures on the distortionary evils of business subsidies will nevertheless hand out $1.5-billion to private corporations in fiscal 1999 - plus another $3.8- billion in subsidies to Crown corporations. Cut those out, and only those - oh, and while you're at it, abolish the tax credit for labour-sponsored venture capital funds, don't just tinker with it - and the budget is balanced.

If the government has not done so, then, it is not because it cannot, but because it chooses not to. In the same way, there is nothing inevitable to the government's decision to slash transfers to the provinces for health, post-secondary education and welfare - the very programs that cry out for a stronger federal presence. Had it made any serious attempts to reform unemployment insurance and old age pensions, these could have been spared.

Yet spending on unemployment insurance is actually forecast, mysteriously, to rise in coming years, while the reform of old age security, welcome as it is, does not even begin to take effect until the year 2001. The Canada Pension Plan, meanwhile, rolls on its merry way, even as the Finance Minister, with monumental shortness of view, puts the squeeze on the RRSP program. One is left with the inescapable impression that in deciding where to cut, as in all things, this government took the path of least resistance.