> t opinion Battalion/Page 2 February 15,1982 A pictorial history of 1983 fiscal budget by Dick West United Press International WASHINGTON — By now you might be thinking that President Reagan’s fiscal 1983 budget has been analyzed every way possible. II so, you underestimate the range of the analysts. T here remains one small void I shall endeavor to fill posthaste. Here, then, is a review of the budget’s artistic qualities: Basically, there are two ways of con templating a budget. One way is to study the numbers and try to make sense of the arithmetical pro jections. Or, if multi-placed digits make your eyes glaze over and your head swim, you can skip the ciphers and simply look at the pictures. Stern realities compel us to conclude that nobody really understands all those figures. Even David Stockman, the statis tical-minded budget director, conceded as much in a magazine interview last year. Visual aids, therefore, are highly im portant in putting a budget message across. It is in the field of graphics that the 1983 compilation shows perhaps the most room for improvement. As in the past, budget artists leaned heavily on three types of graphs to illus trate the situations we are up against. I think of them as “mountain range,” “sky line” and “pie” art. A “mountain range” graph divides the economy into topographical layers, or strata, reminiscent of the geology of the Mesozoic period and Earth’s crust during the Silurian era. The top line traces the peaks and val leys as they currently exist. It is not sym bolism that inspires confidence in the economy. Indeed, the impression I get is that Death Valley lies just beyond the next peak. A “skyline” graph depicts an economic condition by means of little skyscrapers that rise to various heights, much as the office buildings in midtown Manhattan. Anytime I encountered a skyline in the budget, my thoughts flew immediate ly to the need for urban renewal. The familiar “pie” graph, for its part, is a circle divided into proportionate seg ments, much as your old Aunt Mossy used to slice her peach pastries after Sun day dinner. That type of illustration is likewise conducive to dubiety and qualms. What it does, essentially, is whet a con gressman’s appetite for a larger piece of the pie. And there goes fiscal mo eration out the window. Clearly, OBM is in need of some new budgetary symbols. One type of graph it might want to consider could be pat terned after an astronomer’s charting of the firmament. Over there amidst the nebulae would be the deficit projections. Proposed out lays for education and energy would be represented by “black holes.” And shoot ing comet-like across the chart is the Pen tagon budget. Such a graph would give budgeteers the advantage of precedence. Astronom ers don’t know what they are doing either. WHAT TIME IS IT BOYS AND GIRLS? WE DON'T KNOW, WE'RE IN THE LIBRARY! ‘Kermit people’ newest controversy Slouch By Jim Earle conresr MO ZUilMEii kZF.TlHC ACCOUNT SOCIETY ii/M CM