Appropriations chief confident but wary

Now that House budget hawks and appropriators have agreed to fund fiscal 1999 spending bills at the levels contained in the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement, House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., believes he will be able to push his panel's spending bills through the House.

But he warned Thursday that he still anticipates trouble. "This year, we think we can do it," Livingston told CongressDaily. "But I didn't say it was going to be easy."

With appropriators being given their subcommittee allocations this week, Livingston and the 13 cardinals are gearing up for markups shortly after the Memorial Day recess.

The allocations are expected to be based on spending caps in last year's budget deal, meaning large spending cuts contained in a budget resolution would be delayed until later years.

"We only deal in the near-year," Livingston said. While he claimed to be pleased that the budget deal's spending caps will remain in place, Livingston said appropriators will have less money to spend this year than last year, a development that will make the bills more contentious.

"Democratic favorite programs are going to be tight," he said. "I think they're going to complain about that. I think the president's going to complain about that."

Livingston's Democratic counterpart, House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., is already unhappy, blasting the Republicans for backloading cuts that he says will not be enacted.

"That isn't a budget," Obey said. "That's a press release without guts." He added, "They pretend that cuts they couldn't make this year, they'll be able to make after the election."

The ease with which the bills will pass will depend on "what kinds of gimmicks are in the bill," he said, and claimed Republicans would use phony offsets to help pay for the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. "What they've decided is that they're abandoning their principles to run for election," he said. "That's some Republican revolution."

But two key appropriations subcommittee chairmen said they believe their bills can pass.

"If we work on a bipartisan basis, we can do it," said VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. He said he is not worried about spending cuts in future years contained in the House budget. "One Congress cannot speak for another Congress," he said.

Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., said the spending caps are "tough," adding that he expects his subcommittee's outlay allocation to be some $1 billion below last year's level.

And while Porter says he has tried to work with members of his subcommittee, including Democrats, the allocations will make it much harder to produce bipartisan bills.

"I'm certainly going to work with all members of my subcommittee, but it's going to be difficult to accommodate a lot of different parties," he said. "I don't think anybody has an allocation that's much better than a freeze. It's going to be a much tougher year than last year."

Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Neumann, R-Wis., said he believes this year's budget surplus may amount to between $80 billion and $100 billion.

House Speaker Gingrich Thursday touted Neumann's estimates as much more accurate than those of the CBO. Neumann said revenue receipts are much higher than anticipated, while spending has increased only a small amount. "It's not high-powered Einstein kind of stuff," Neumann said.