GOP decries spending plans, insists on tax cuts

Republican leaders today continued to rally around a major tax cut proposal while criticizing the White House for proposing what they see as excessive spending in its fiscal 2000 budget plan.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., released a statement containing some conciliatory elements, saying that Social Security reform must be accomplished on a bipartisan basis, and that setting aside a large portion of the budget surplus to shoring up Social Security, as President Clinton has proposed, "makes sense" to congressional Republicans.

However, Hastert criticized Clinton for promoting spending on "Washington-based programs," adding, "Clearly, the President sees the surplus as an opportunity to expand the power, the influence, and the size of the federal government."

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, in a speech before the American Hospital Association today, slammed the president for proposing a "massive spending increase." Armey continued his call to cut "every tax in America" by 10 percent.

Calling the budget an "overpayment" by U.S. taxpayers, Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., rebuked Clinton for proposing new taxes and new domestic spending initiatives that he said violated the budget caps accepted in 1997.

Echoing that theme, a Senate Budget Committee spokesman said today, "This surplus is burning a hole in the president's pocket." Congress and the administration can agree that some 62 percent of the surplus should be set aside for Social Security, the spokesman said. The disagreement comes over the remaining 38 percent of the surplus-about $787 billion in overpayments by taxpayers, he said.

"That's $787 billion this federal government doesn't need," he asserted. "They sent it to us in good faith. We should send it back to them."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, R-Del., declared: "...The President has asked Americans to go without a significant tax cut until at least the year 2015 so that he can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on big government. That is just plain wrong."