While Congressional leaders compete to spend a budget surplus that does not exist, the hit movie “Donnie Brasco” has already told all about such surpluses: Fuggeddabowditt! If by some miracle a surplus materializes, it should be used to reduce the $5.5 trillion debt or fill the gaping hole in the Social Security trust fund, not on political pandering.

The imaginary budget surplus would require a continued economic boom and Congress maintaining its self-imposed spending limits -– which if history is a good judge is not likely to happen. Projections of a budget surplus, “should be taken with a grain of salt,” according to the current Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director. Further, surplus projections include “revenue” from a higher Social Security tax put in place to handle the increased Social Security payment when retirements begin to surge in the year 2010.

But that hasn’t stopped many in Congress from coming up with new uses for the “surplus.” Speaker Gingrich argues for cutting taxes “every year” the budget is in the black. Rep. Bud Shuster (R-PA), chairman of the House transportation committee, wants to spend the surplus on highways.

President Clinton has argued that the surplus does not yet exist and proposed to balance the budget ahead of the balanced budget law’s 2002 date. However, he also proposed tax breaks and new spending programs almost immediately after better-than-expected budget projections made the surplus a remote possibility.

No wonder the public does not think the good news will last. By a 63 to 26 percent margin, the public does not think the budget will stay balanced for the next several years, according to a USA Today poll released on January 9.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, budget experts, including former chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, former directors of the Office of Management and Budget and the CBO, advised against using surpluses, if they materialize, to finance additional spending or tax cuts. According to Laura Tyson chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the first Clinton Administration, we should “save any small surpluses … for a rainy day fund.” Like when the economy hits a rough patch and Social Security and Medicare bills come due.