Opportunity Lost, Again.

BESIDES Gary Condit, the news vacuum these last few weeks has been filled with reports that the federal government's much-ballyhooed surplus is dramatically shrinking and that Social Security funds are likely to be used to make up for the operational shortfall.

The Democrats, on cue, are blasting the Republicans for setting in motion this unexpected development by passing a $1.3 trillion tax cut. The Republicans are saying that using Social Security money is not a big deal and that the tax cut will stimulate more spending, which in turn will help prevent a recession.

These debate points are not new and have yet to generate much traction among an electorate far more interested in such straightforward matters as the sexual escapades of an otherwise irrelevant congressman from Modesto.

And who can blame them? By all accounts, the Social Security trust fund is in fine shape through at least 2015, and even then, when revenues from Social Security taxes no longer cover the benefits paid out, it is presumed that the government will sell bonds to make up the difference. Determining the precise legal obligation that the United States has towards Social Security beneficiaries misses the political bottom line: Short of civil war or worldwide depression, nothing will stop those payments from going out, as long as we're around anyway.

Rather than focus the debate on Washington's accounting tricks in moving around a small amount of money, the Democrats should be riled about a more central point: how that $1.3 trillion was frittered away by a supply-side argument that deserves to be dead and buried.

The argument: that the feds can slash taxes, raise defense spending and somehow generate the kind of growth that will reduce deficits and public debt. The Bush administration is using the current slowdown to conveniently defend mailing out $300 checks ($600 per couple) -- forgetting, of course, that the tax cut idea was bandied months before the economy began to sour.

"Most of the $1.3 trillion will go to people who are already very rich," writes former Labor Secretary Robert Reich in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. "Arguably this makes little sense in a society ever more divided between have-mores and have-lesses."

Beyond this liberal perspective is a practical one: Flush with cash from the '90s Wall Street boom, government had an unusual opportunity to invest in the nation's beaten-up infrastructure -- its roads, its schools, its health care systems. Doing so would have made all our lives a little better and generated, dare we say, Keynesianstyle growth to boot.

This is not liberal claptrap -- just the simple reality that left to its own devices, the private sector will do whatever is in the best interest of the

private sector. Nothing wrong with that, but it leaves out the important role of government, which like it or not, must act as a facilitator on behalf of everybody.

Too bad Washington missed out on its opportunity. So instead of improving quality of life, Congress and the White House will be whittling down next year's budget in the name of supply-side economics. At some point, it will become clear that the experiment once again has failed -- but not before there are many more potholes and barely literate kids. Enjoy your money, taxpayers.