Last week was one of those rare times when the political world in Washington and the show business world in New York came together-and it was not for a fundraiser.
Last Thursday, as Bernadette Peters was singing "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" to her co-star Tom Wopat and opening the Broadway revival of "Annie Get Your Gun," House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., had that same message for Bill Clinton as they announced a deal on the fiscal 2000 budget.
Essentially, the deal was that compared to what the president proposed in his budget, congressional Republicans agreed to pay off more debt, cut more taxes, protect Social Security better, spend more on the military and more steadfastly maintain the caps on discretionary spending. You can almost hear the refrain now between the two budget committee chairs and the White House-"No you can't." "Yes I can." "No you can't." "Yes I can."
On the positive side, this is the first time in two years that Kasich and Domenici have been able to reach an agreement on anything. As a result, it may represent a change from the differences between House and Senate Republicans on the budget that have made the budget process so difficult to implement in recent years.
On the negative side, there is far less to this agreement than the Kasich/Domenici announcement seems to indicate.
First, the fact that it took so long for an agreement to be reached on seven very basic principles is the best example yet of how difficult it has become for Congress to budget in an era of surpluses. It took weeks for Kasich, Domenici, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to agree on things that should have been taken for granted when the negotiations began. How then will the full House and Senate be able to agree on the specific ways these principles are to be implemented?
Second, the very careful wording of the agreement shows that it is designed almost entirely simply to get Congress through this stage in the budget process, and that there is little expectation that it will actually be implemented as agreed. The word from key staff is that the agreement essentially promises only that the caps on appropriations will be maintained in the budget resolution. This implies that once the resolution has been adopted, there will be little or no effort made to maintain the discipline as appropriations themselves are being passed.
This seems to be confirmed by the contradictory policies the principles support. There is no way for the caps to be maintained while military spending is increased without simultaneously cutting all other discretionary programs to a degree that is politically impossible. And although the agreement does not say it, there are no indications that Domenici plans to abandon his plan for a huge increase in education. This implies that while the budget resolution may not mention it, the appropriations bills will have to include at least as many gimmicks as President Clinton's fiscal 2000 budget, which congressional Republicans so resounding criticized when it was released.
Third, in much the same way that this year's Clinton budget marginalized the importance of the president's proposal ("Budget Battles," Feb. 10), this agreement trivializes the budget resolution stage of the congressional budget process. The agreement seems to be little more than a way for the House and Senate to avoid being criticized for not passing a budget resolution two years in a row, for the leadership to take credit for keeping the process on schedule, and for Congress to be able to have a reconciliation bill later this year. (Reconciliation makes a tax cut much more likely because of the time limit on debate. This makes a filibuster impossible and avoids the need for tax-cut proponents to get 60 votes.)
The proof will be whether the House and Senate Budget Committees draft budget resolutions as detailed as they have been in previous years, because the resolutions will have a very hard time being approved in either house if the spending cuts needed to stay within the caps are displayed in some way. This could mean that the totals for each budget function (Agriculture, Energy, Veterans, etc.) will have to be eliminated, and that will make the budget resolution far less meaningful.
What does this all mean? While most Broadway musicals ("Annie Get Your Gun" included) end happily, that is anything but certain with the fiscal 2000 budget debate.
The Budget Battles Budget Countdown
As of today there are only 21 potential legislative days left before the April 15 statutory deadline for passage of the fiscal 2000 congressional budget resolution. If Mondays and Fridays, when the House and Senate typically are not in session, are excluded, there are only 14 days.
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. Last week's question asked you to name the one year when the budget resolution conference report was adopted by the April 15 deadline. The answer is 1993, when the fiscal 1994 budget resolution conference report was passed by the House on March 31 and the Senate on April 1. The winner of an "I Won A 1999 Budget Battle" T-shirt, who was chosen at random from the many, many correct responses from true budget wonks across the nation, is Carl Christie of the House Budget Committee majority staff.
This Week's Question. This year's Academy Awards for the best movies, performances and technical efforts will be announced in a few weeks; those awards are commonly known as the Oscars. If there were an annual federal budget award, what should it be called and why? For example, should it be the Porkys? Bonus question: Who should host the show giving out these awards? Send your responses to scollender@njdc.com and you might win an "I Won A 1999 Budget Battle" T-shirt to wear while watching to see whether "Saving Private Ryan" beats "Shakespeare in Love" for best picture of the year.
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