Consider the following:
1. In recent weeks it has been congressional Republicans who have demanded to increase spending beyond what the White House said was immediately needed for the Kosovo military emergency. The Democratic administration has been criticizing the add-on.
Republicans' push for additional spending has put the tax cut they have so steadfastly supported in serious jeopardy. If Republicans are truly committed to doing what they stated in the fiscal 2000 budget resolution-only cutting taxes to the extent that there is an on-budget surplus to pay for it-anything that reduces that surplus, like increased emergency spending, makes that tax cut either smaller or impossible.
2. Combined with the emergency appropriation enacted last year, the one now moving through Congress will reduce the fiscal 1999 surplus by around $35 billion. Without these supplementals, this year's overall budget surplus might have come close to exceeding the surplus in the Social Security trust fund and so would have allowed Republicans to push for an immediate tax cut. Because of the Republican-supported supplementals, however, the tax cut plans may have to wait, perhaps until fiscal 2001 or later.
In effect, this means congressional Republicans are now pursuing much the same "tax-and-spend" policies they used to criticize Democrats for during the Reagan era.
3. Although it ultimately had broad bipartisan support, last year's biggest spending increase-the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century-essentially was the handiwork of Rep. Bud Shuster, Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
That same Republican-controlled committee is now pushing to do for federal aviation trust funds what it did last year for the highway trust funds: effectively exempting them from the budget process constraints that limit all other discretionary programs.
4. Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, have been publicly insisting that the existing caps on discretionary spending have to be raised. The reason? The two chairmen are unwilling to push for the program reductions that will be needed to comply with the caps.
It is incorrect to assume that the recent Republican budget actions mean they and the Democrats have simply reversed the roles they played in the budget wars of the 1980s. Instead, while Republicans are using the same 1980s rhetoric to try to distinguish themselves from the Democrats, the two political parties actually appear to be far closer now on budget issues than they have been in quite some time.
For example, last year's emergency supplemental appropriation was as much a response to Clinton administration demands for additional funds as it was a Republican effort. But House and Senate Republicans not only decided not to fight the White House, they also added funds for their own priorities.
This raises an interesting question. If the two parties are closer now on the budget than they have been in a few decades, why is it proving so hard for Congress and the White House to come up with anything that even remotely looks like a budget deal?
To be continued next week ...
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. The Congressional Budget Office published its estimate of the April budget results on Friday, May 7. Based on these preliminary numbers, the "I Won A Budget Battle" T- shirt goes to Jim Carter and Bob Stein of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, who guessed that total April revenues would be $267.5 billion. Their response was only $1 billion away from the CBO number of $266.5 billion. Honorable mention (but no shirt) goes to Tony Brush of Bradley Woods, whose guess of $265 billion was a bare $500 million further off than Jim's and Bob's.
This Week's Question. Here's a way for you to get your own "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt and impress your English professor or Sunday school teacher at the same time. All you have to do is come up with a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible that is in some way appropriate for the federal budget debate. For example, think about Polonius' classic remark, "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be," and you'll get the idea. Send your entry to scollender@njdc.com.