Little progress made on budget impasse

Grim budget hawks and top GOP leaders appeared to make little progress Thursday in their first meeting to try to smooth passage of vastly different spending blueprints.

"We really didn't make much headway," Senate Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., told reporters following a meeting with House Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to discuss the upcoming conference on the fiscal 1999 budget resolution.

Kasich declared: "I really can't say anything. It'll just make somebody mad." Lott said the group is "looking at all of the numbers," echoing Gingrich's comments that it is difficult to get the CBO to provide Congress with accurate figures.

The meeting was the first face-to-face session between the House and Senate leadership on the budget plans.

The House plan calls for $101 billion in spending cuts, with that amount being spent on tax cuts, while the Senate plan allows for a $30 billion tax cut.

Conservatives on both sides of Capitol Hill have said they would oppose any budget that does not use the House tax cut figure, while House moderate Republicans have said that level is too high.

Neither House has appointed conferees on the budget resolution. "We're not ready yet," Domenici said. Asked about working with Kasich, Domenici said: "He's my good friend. We've worked very well together in the past."

Meanwhile, House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston, R-La., has asked Rules Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon, R-N.Y., to help approve a plan that would "deem" the subcommittee allocations that Livingston has distributed to his subcommittee chairmen.

"I believe it is time to begin to mark up our bills and present them to the House for consideration before the conference on the budget is completed," Livingston said in a letter to Solomon, adding that he does not expect a budget conference report for several weeks.

He said that if the conference agreement on the budget resolution changes the overall allocation to his committee, he would adjust the individual allocations.

Livingston has based his allocations on last year's budget agreement, even though the House version of the budget resolution makes changes to that agreement.