Where's this money coming from?

Is Clinton giving away the store? Some taxpayer watchdog groups think so.

During his State of the Union address, the president outlined some $288 billion in new spending over the next 15 years -- most of which is based on budget surplus projections that Congress hasn't even seen yet.

And then there's the little problem that the surplus is based entirely on moneys "borrowed," in an accounting trick, from the Social Security trust fund.

Nevertheless, the White House continues even more spending initiatives. A new $1 billion package of Welfare-to-Work spending initiatives were announced yesterday by officials who said they were designed to "provide parents the tools they need to support their children and succeed in the workforce."

President Clinton said the new package was needed to "ensure that those remaining on the welfare rolls make a successful transition from welfare to work."

White House spokesmen said the initiatives were focused on increasing the employment of low-income fathers so they can support their children. Officials said they envision the spending package will add 200,000 more people to the nation's workforce, permanently removing them from state welfare rolls.

Dag Vegas, White House press office spokesman, said at least $150 million is dedicated to "helping fathers fulfill their responsibilities to their kids by working and paying child support." He also said remaining funds focus on long term welfare recipients with the greatest obstacles to employment.

Vegas told WorldNetDaily those obstacles included individuals with limited English proficiency, disabilities, substance abuse problems, or a history of domestic violence.

Other elements of Clinton's plan call for spending money on housing for Welfare-to-Work participants. The president's budget, for example, will contain $580 million for housing vouchers and "transportation assistance" to help welfare recipients obtain work and stay employed.

The plan outlines $430 million for 75,000 Welfare-to-Work housing vouchers and an additional $144 million for 25,000 new vouchers.

"This is a 50 percent increase over the 50,000 vouchers the president secured last year," Vegas said.

Clinton's budget will also increase Access to Jobs transportation funding from $75 million to $150 million, doubling the number of individuals and communities that can receive transportation assistance.

Vegas said the federal money would be provided to states and local governments who already have successful Welfare-to-Work programs in place. He added that since 1993, 36 states nationwide have had welfare caseload declines of more than 40 percent and nationwide the rolls have fallen off by 44 percent, from 14.1 million to just below 8 million. He claimed that government figures also show that child support collections have also risen about 80 percent since Clinton took office.

Clinton's budget contains an additional $530 million to encourage more employers to hire welfare recipients and other disadvantaged individuals. In response to Clinton's 1996 State of the Union challenge, some 10,000 companies nationwide have joined the Welfare to Work Partnership, hiring "hundreds of thousands of former welfare recipients."

Meanwhile, however, John Berthoud, president of the National Taxpayers Union, told WorldNetDaily that the president "seems to have opened the floodgates of the federal treasury." He said the NTU was the first organization to calculate what Clinton's proposals would cost Americans, but he admits he hasn't seen the figure used too often in media reports about the president's proposals.

He said the president continued to engage in a "triangulation strategy" -- talking a big liberal agenda while using Republican ideas to "arrive precisely at the middle" of most major budget issues.

He also said current rumblings on Capitol Hill seemed to be shifting toward raising the 1997 congressionally mandated budgetary spending caps on a number of line items in the next fiscal year -- a move he says would hurt taxpayers even worse.

With "Americans already paying 40 to 45 percent of their total income in taxes to various levels of government," Berthoud said, there is no good reason to begin spending so much more money on new government programs if and when a budget surplus finally arrives.

"We advocate returning any budgetary surpluses to the taxpayers," he said, rather than using it to fund a host of new spending.

Others say even the issue of a budget surplus is a moot point because there really isn't any surplus in the first place.

John Crudele, an economist and columnist for the New York Post, said in an article yesterday "over the past year, the federal deficit -- which is money owed by our government -- rose from $5.486 trillion to $5.618 trillion. Those are government numbers right out of Barron's."

"That means the federal debt climbed by $132 billion. Which means the federal budget deficit last year was $132 billion. There was no surplus of $70 billion, or any other amount, as Washington is claiming," he said.

Crudele said Washington is claiming a surplus only because lawmakers have been "raiding" the Social Security trust fund.

"The surplus claim is wrong. It's a fraud."