House struggles to hike spending, stay within caps

With the ambitious goal of sticking to the fiscal 2000 spending cap central to the GOP budget outline, House appropriators and budget writers are struggling to figure out how to get from the current year spending level of $565 billion to the Office of Management and Budget-set cap of $538 billion-and also increase defense and education spending.

Even if the Budget Committee uses the CBO's slightly higher cap estimate of $542 billion, painful cuts will be required.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said appropriators will need to "do a lot of oversight to find waste" in other domestic programs to cut-but also suggested "there are ways to move money around," such as from mandatory to discretionary accounts, to pay for their priorities.

Rep. John Sununu, R-N.H., who sits on both the Budget and Appropriations committees, said Republicans "are not looking at the user fees and taxes the president proposed, but we could do modifications to fee structures." Sununu also said, "My guess is there also will be some changes to how we do the accounting for defense," in terms of the assumptions used to determine budget savings, or how outlays are calculated.

Rep. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a Budget Committee member and defense hawk, conceded that finding another $16 billion for military spending, much less the $22 billion the service chiefs say they need, "will be very difficult. We've cut just about all we can cut, so it only gets tougher and tougher" to find enough cuts to meet their goals.

"It's going to be everybody having to bite a bullet," Chambliss said, but "it's critical we stay within the caps."

Meanwhile, conservative Democratic "Blue Dogs" were mulling whether they will offer their own alternative budget resolution.

Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, said his group "will be saying very clearly that all Social Security revenues, starting in the year 2000, must be used for debt reduction," and that to do that and to keep spending down means "there's not much left for a major tax cut."

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said Blue Dogs "are not going to do anything until we see the Republican budget," and whether Blue Dogs can support the GOP "depends on what they do with the tax cut."

Peterson said he, for one, has spending priorities that would not leave room for much of a tax cut - but those are different from the ones proposed by President Clinton and Budget ranking member John Spratt, D-S.C. Peterson said "we may need more for the [Veterans Affairs] budget," and anywhere from $2 billion to $6 billion in fiscal 2000 to respond to the crisis in the farm economy.