What must be determined is whether the plan will leave large deficits looming in the years after 2002.

We are far better able to afford public investment today than in 1992, when the deficit loomed large.

In 2001, however, the bottom dropped out of Europe's economy, and deficits suddenly loomed large.

Last year, as the deficit loomed, the state delayed the decline, freezing taxes at the 1989 rate of 7.875 percent.

With the deficit looming, lawmakers said that costly proposals would have little chance of surviving.

The deficit looming in 1983 was only temporary.

Moreover, the deficit in the fiscal year that begins in June 1994 already looms large.

This year, the economy is better, no huge deficit looms and the Democrats, suffering from infighting, have not settled on a candidate.

With a $4 billion deficit looming next year, bringing more bureaucracy to Trenton is, at the least, counterintuitive.

Meanwhile, spending rises and the deficits loom, feeding a sense of domestic policy shapelessness.