Pressure on spending caps increases

The $13 billion emergency defense supplemental that House Republicans will bring to the floor Thursday may buy GOP leaders and appropriators a bit more room under the fiscal 2000 spending cap. Regardless, sources on and off Capitol Hill still believe that Congress and the White House are headed for their annual Pennsylvania Avenue train wreck, albeit over fewer bills than last year's omnibus spending package encompassed.

GOP sources agreed that shifting some defense spending from the FY2000 appropriation to the FY99 supplemental should free up enough money to ease the passage of some early FY2000 appropriations bills.

Even Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said that including nearly $1 billion for military construction and $1.8 billion for a pay raise and retirement package in the supplemental "does allow us to address those shortfalls ... do some backfilling if you will" rather than trying to fit it under the FY2000 cap.

But GOP sources also predicted that the usual suspects among the domestic spending bills, Labor-HHS, Commerce-Justice-State and VA-HUD, and perhaps a few others still will be left hanging until the end of the year.

At that point, Republican Capitol Hill veterans said, Congress and the White House will be forced to bust the overall cap to get the remaining appropriations bills enacted.

Because the leadership decided to stick to the statutory spending cap in the FY2000 budget, Republicans should start feeling the squeeze later this month when the FY2000 subcommittee allocations come out and the deep cuts necessary to stick to the cap become apparent.

For FY2000, the budget resolution caps total discretionary appropriations, both defense and non-defense, at $532 billion, compared to the FY99 total of $574 billion.

Budget Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., is not troubled that the $13 billion supplemental for the current fiscal year, during which Congress is already spending $20 billion over the FY99 budget cap, could undermine the fiscal discipline required by this year's budget resolution.

"I don't have any concern that we won't be able to meet the goals set forth in the budget resolution," Chambliss said.

But Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., whose subcommittee always has a tough task in writing its bill, said he continues to believe, even with the additional spending in the FY99 supplemental, "that given our military needs and the strong economy, we ought to make, upfront and honestly, an adjustment in the caps. Insisting on caps that are unrealistic makes our job very difficult" and undermines Congress' bargaining position vis-a-vis the White House because no one expects to honor those caps.

Porter added, "If you don't have caps in place that can be observed, that are realistic, when you get down to the final negotiations with the White House [at the end of the fiscal year], the difficulty is you don't have any ceiling that the White House has to respect."

Senior Budget member Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said, "In the end, I believe the budget caps will be broken because both the president and Congress" will allow it.

But Shays said the $13 billion Kosovo supplemental is both necessary and in line with budget law, and he will vote for it.

"The fact is we are effectively at war and we have an expenditure that was not anticipated," Shays said. "I'm not happy about it but I don't see the alternative, we've spread our military resources too thin for too long."