Black ink award winner

With almost as much fanfare and hype as the Academy Awards and People Magazine's "Sexiest Man of the Year," "Budget Battles" is proud to announce the winner of the first annual Black Ink Award.

The Black Ink Award was created to honor the person or organization that had the most positive impact on the year's budget debate.

How The Winner Was Selected

The selection process began in September, when Budget Battles readers were asked to send in their nominations. Readers were then given the opportunity to vote for one of the top six (there was a tie for the fifth spot). In alphabetical order, the nominees were President Clinton; the Concord Coalition; Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan; Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio; Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La.; and Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas.

This was a difficult year to begin this annual award. As the budget debate continued, it became clear that the relatively strong support for budget discipline that was so evident on Capitol Hill in recent years had started to wane. Congress failed to pass a budget resolution for the first time in the history of the congressional budget process. Only one of the 13 regular fiscal 1999 appropriations was signed into law by the start of the fiscal year. The largest "emergency" spending bill ever considered was enacted to get around the spending caps on discretionary spending. And contrary to the Budget Enforcement Act's pay-as-you-rules, there was a substantial desire to use the consolidated budget surplus to pay for a tax cut.

And The Winner Is...

Nevertheless, readers responded enthusiastically when asked to pick their choice for budget person of the year. By a narrow margin, the winner of the first ever "Budget Battles" Black Ink Award is House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich.

Voters did have to provide some information about their identity, but only to guard against electronic ballot-stuffing. As a result, Kasich supporters could not be contacted directly for the equivalent of cyber exit polling.

Federal budget observers and analysts, however, give Kasich high marks for pushing the debate this year when others wanted it to be more of a non-event. A number of people specifically noted that Kasich produced a budget resolution that included more spending cuts and a bigger tax cut than the leadership -- particularly House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. -- thought possible.

Kasich was also given credit for creating a task force in his committee to come up with potential changes in the budget process and for then giving that task force the support it needed to produce a bill. That legislation, which was sponsored by task force co-chairs Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, and Ben Cardin, D-Md., is widely expected to serve as the blueprint for budget reform next year.

Kasich also was cited for his efforts beyond just the past year. A number of people indicated that he should be recognized for his efforts over the past decade, when he pushed the Republican caucus, the budget committee and the House to come up with specific, almost line-by-line budget plans. Although these plans often caused as many political problems as they solved, the detail also gave credibility to Republican budget efforts that they would not have had otherwise. Even more importantly, the Kasich efforts served as a road map for the future Republican budget plans when they took control of the House in 1994.

Question Of The Week

Last Week's Question. There were a number of great answers to last week's question, which asked readers to pick out an appropriate holiday gift for the special budget person on their list. In keeping with the holiday spirit, there are two winners of an "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt.

Joel Rutstein, who works in the office of the chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, wins for his suggestion that the director of the Congressional Budget Office should get "a case of a yet-to-be-produced item-one that promotes static cling." (Note: Joel presumably was referring to static scoring of revenue legislation. If so, that might also be an appropriate gift for the staff director of the Joint Tax Committee, which is the organization charged with doing revenue estimates.)

And Scott DeFife of the American Public Power Association gets a T-shirt for his suggested gift to Speaker Gingrich, who he says should get an "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt "as a lovely parting gift -- thanks for playing our game, Newt!"

See You Next Year

This is the last "Budget Battles" for 1998. Thank you all for reading so devotedly each week, for playing question of the week contest so doggedly, and for your e-mails asking for more information and offering additional insight. My very best wishes to you all for a happy and healthy holiday and New Year.