Republicans blast Clinton budget proposals

With the White House previewing multiple new fiscal year 2000 spending proposals and congressional appropriators and budgeteers worried about staying under increasingly tight budget caps, the Clinton administration can expect another year of partisan budget battles on Capitol Hill.

Since the beginning of the month, the administration has rolled out a series of ambitious new spending initiatives to be included in the president's FY2000 budget request, which will be presented to Congress Feb. 1.

Clinton will have a national platform from which to rally support for the new programs with tonight's State of the Union address, a platform he has employed to great effect in the past. The President's recent initiatives include:

• $12 billion in new defense readiness and modernization spending;
• $1 billion for a Lands Legacy Initiative on conservation;
• $1 billion for Building Livable Communities programs;
• $6.4 billion over five years for a new 21st Century Policing Initiative;
• $1.6 billion for economic development in poor urban and rural areas;
• $2 billion over five years in tax credits and health insurance incentives to help disabled people go from welfare to work;
• $1 billion to improve medical services for 32 million uninsured Americans;
• $6.1 billion for public transportation and $2.2 billion for regional traffic congestion control air quality programs; and
• $5 billion to $6 billion over five years in tax credits for long-term health care for the elderly.

And except for Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who wants to raise the discretionary spending caps for FY2000 laid out in the Balance Budget Act of 1997, Republican sources on the Budget and Appropriations committees have scant interest in going beyond their statutory spending limits, preferring instead to cut spending and move money around under the caps to redirect funds towards their priority areas.

House Appropriations Staff Director James Dyer dismissed the administration's FY2000 spending proposals as "egregious to a fault," saying the White House has no realistic legislative game plan to pay for the additional funds.

Said another House Appropriations source, "We have to deal in reality. We cannot rely on imaginary savings like the President's budget so often does."

Another senior House GOP source complained the Clinton budget numbers "don't come close to adding up," and that the administration "may end up proposing user fees or taxes to pay for things that many of their own members [House Democrats] would not support."

And a Senate Budget Committee source expressed frustration that Clinton "builds up all these expectations [for new spending] without talking about how to pay for it, and when you [do] get the pay-fors, they're all smoke and mirrors."

While Stevens said last week he does not believe Republicans can pay for the defense and education spending increases they want for the next fiscal year without raising the budget caps, neither GOP House appropriators nor Budget Committee sources on either side of the Capitol are interested, nor for that matter are any fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill.

A spokeswoman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said Domenici agrees with Stevens' spending priorities for FY2000, "but he wants to get them done under the caps," which would mean cutting spending rather than increasing the caps.

Domenici over the weekend cited new forecasts of a $600 billion surplus "over and above what's needed for Social Security," and said "most of that" would be returned to taxpayers.

A spokesman for House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, likewise said Kasich "helped negotiate the caps. He certainly won't want to bust the caps."

A leading House moderate, Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., decried the general lack of fiscal discipline and inability to abide by the budget deal.

Said Castle, "This is the first year of real cuts [under the 1997 balanced budget law], and we couldn't even handle the second year [of cuts, for FY99] without breaking out of the caps" with emergency supplemental spending.

He said that if Congress and Clinton are going to stick to their 1997 agreement, the House, the Senate and the White House will have to work together.

"There's got to be some coming together, and sooner rather than later," Castle said. "I personally think this calls for some sort of summit. ... Before we do a budget resolution or appropriations bills, I think the president and key budget and appropriations committee members need to sit down and work together."

A spokesman for the House Conservative Action Team was equally adamant about conservatives' intention of sticking to the 1997 deal.

"We're talking about a 1997 budget agreement, and we're just barely into 1999. If we're already talking about renegotiating the caps, I don't think there's going to be any incentive on the part of conservatives to do that," the spokesman said, adding, "I think there's a way to cut taxes, increase defense and not break the balanced budget caps."

Across the aisle, a House Appropriations Democratic spokeswoman said Democrats "are taking a wait and see approach" to the president's budget request and that while Democrats have spending priorities, "whether they will want to raise the caps remains to be seen."

But an aide to a Democratic member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is holding its own State of the Union address at 3:30 p.m. today, said progressives do not want to see budget surplus money from the Social Security trust fund used to beef up defense spending, or higher defense appropriations to be made at the expense of spending on social programs.

With Clinton proposing so much new spending without specifying how most of it would be paid for, the aide said progressives worry that their priorities will be the first to be sacrificed.