House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, today told CongressDaily he wants to include a provision for an automatic continuing resolution in the fiscal 2000 budget resolution.
Following a speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Kasich said, "I'm going to push very hard to get that enacted in this year's budget."
Kasich said that, without a mechanism to ensure federal government agencies are funded at current-year levels when appropriations bills are not enacted by the start of a fiscal year, the president "has no incentive right now" not to shut down the government.
Kasich also said President Clinton's $1.77 trillion fiscal 2000 budget is "not a legitimate starting point" for the budget resolution. But he also said there are several major issues the House Republican Conference needs to work out before he will comment further on how the budget resolution is shaping up.
The primary issues, Kasich said, are the percentage of the budget surplus that should be devoted annually to shoring up Social Security, the size and structure of a tax cut and the extension of certain business tax breaks-as well as how, or perhaps whether, to stay within the fiscal 2000 discretionary spending caps.
For himself, Kasich said he would reserve 62 percent of the budget surplus for Social Security, and that he favors a 10 percent across-the-board tax cut that would kick in "beginning in this Congress"-although Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has said any tax cut would have to start small.
In his remarks to state legislators, Kasich again touted his Social Security reform plan, which would return 2 percent to 3 percent of payroll tax revenues to individuals so they can invest that money themselves in personal retirement accounts.
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