Frankly, I'm a little bothered about this whole federal budget deal.

I'm not very happy with the Democrats. And I'm fully disillusioned with the Republicans.

Lawmakers stuck their moistened index fingers into the political wind and acted accordingly.

They knew that education was on the minds of the American people so they rushed in with proposals to hire 100,000 new teachers and modernize 5,000 schools.

The Republicans gave Clinton and the Demos the teachers but refused to pass the $5 billion to modernize the 5,000 schools.

Of course this makes Republicans anti-education, you see, which is what Clinton and the Demos will tell us all the way to Nov. 3, which is election day, by the way.

But if you remember last week's column, you will note that the Republican-led Congress passed a whole bunch of education initiatives.

Never mind. Why let facts get in the way of making political hay?

And when I saw President Clinton wagging his bent index finger at the camera and telling me that he was going to hire 100,000 teachers, I was skeptical.

And rightly so.

This year's budget earmarks exactly $1.2 billion dollars for the Clinton 100,000-teacher plan. That's right. $1.2 billion.

That's a lot of money, but I don't need a new math teacher to tell me that it comes out to about $12,000 per teacher.

Now where in the world can you hire a teacher for $12,000? You can't. Well, I don't know, maybe in Namibia.

But not in the United States.

So what gives?

Well, that $1.2 billion is supposed to allow school districts to start to hire 100,000 new teachers.

It will be up to the next Congress and the Congress after that and the Congress after that to fund the rest of the teachers. Any bets on how many new teachers we'll really get?

Not 100,000. Not even close.

But hey, it sure sounds good, doesn't it?

Of course it is completely misleading and disingenuous to stand in front of the camera and say, "We're going to give you 100,000 new teachers," but I guess we're getting kind of used to that.

One of the things that Clinton was most proud of was his ability to beat back a Republican plan for an $80 billion tax cut.

Again, Clinton completely misled us when he said that the Republicans were irresponsibly trying to spend this year's $70 billion budget surplus in tax cuts.

Clinton said the budget surplus should be used to save Social Security first.

What he and the American press didn't tell us was that the Republican tax-cut plan was strung out over six years. This year's portion was about $6 billion.

At the same time, Clinton and the Democrats, never embarrassed to do a little spending of their own, proposed $20 billion in new programs.

So Clinton chastises Republicans for wanting to spend $80 billion this year on a tax cut when they really only want to spend $6 billion. Then he goes out and spends $20 billion of the surplus. What happened to saving Social Security first?

When it comes to tax cuts, we have to save Social Security first, says the president. But when it comes to a batch of new spending on social programs, and an International Monetary Fund bailout, well, I guess Social Security can wait.

I know I am just a dumb Hoosier, but what is the harm in giving us back some of our tax dollars, anyway? It's our money, isn't it?

And wasn't it Clinton who ran for office in 1992 with a giant "middle class tax cut" plank in his campaign platform?

Of course, the Republicans didn't have the guts to fight for tax cuts because if they did, Clinton would have vetoed the budget bill and shut down the government.

Then he would have gone on TV and blamed the Republicans. No reporter would question him and most people would believe him.

Republicans are already worried because the Clinton spinmeisters are making the rounds on the nightly news, telling everybody the impeachment proceedings are a sham and the case against Clinton is all about sex and it's just a right-wing conspiracy.

The result is that all the polls show people trust Clinton more than the Republicans even, though they know Clinton is a liar and a fornicator. This drives Republicans nuts and it also affects their performance in Congress.

They're afraid to do anything.

They basically bailed out on lots of conservative issues for fear of, well, Clinton.

They blew off parental consent for minors seeking abortions and failed to end the marriage penalty in the tax code. They failed to act on campaign finance reform. They funded the National Endowment for the Arts and increased funding for Planned Parenthood and similar abortion proponents. Funding under Title X was actually $12 million above what Clinton asked for.

More importantly, the Republicans leading Congress bailed out on the things conservatives most count on them for - lower taxes and smaller government. Spending on government programs is up $300 billion since 1995 and tax relief is negligible.

What's a conservative to do on Nov. 3? [[In-content Ad]]