In Friday's edition of CongressDaily/A.M., Lisa Caruso reported that House Republican leaders have instructed the Appropriations Committee to forget about its plan to designate $3 billion in routine spending for veterans' health care as an "emergency." This reversal means the spending will count against this year's very tight cap on discretionary spending, and the committee will have to do something it had wanted to avoid-find $3 billion in additional spending cuts.
Just a few years ago, House Republicans didn't want to use the emergency cap exception even for real disaster relief.
This represents the first crack in what has quickly become an ongoing congressional strategy: designating anything and everything as a Budget Enforcement Act emergency when there seems to be no other way to deal with the caps. The fiscal 1999 supplemental appropriation enacted in May designated about $7 billion in ongoing military spending as an emergency, even though virtually everyone on Capitol Hill and in the White House admitted there was nothing emergency about it. And just a few weeks ago the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary designated $4.5 billion for the 2000 census as an emergency, even though the U.S. Constitution mandates that it happen every 10 years.
Caruso reported that the leadership made its decision about the veterans' spending after the GOP Caucus and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, expressed strong reservations about the plan. But apparently Kasich, the caucus and the leadership do not think that emergency labeling is such a big stretch when it comes to the census -- either that or they were not able to come up with an alternative offset to stop that cap exception from moving forward. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has indicated that he will accept the House emergency designation when the bill gets to conference later this year.
This is quite a change from just a few years ago, when the spending-cut religious fervor was so strong among House Republicans in particular that they tried to prevent the emergency designation from being used to assist families and businesses displaced by the floods in the Midwest. These floods, which at one point were described by President Clinton as "biblical" in size and impact, were almost precisely why the emergency exception to the spending caps was created-to deal with an unanticipated event such as a natural disaster or military situation. Yet many Republicans at the time said that even this spending should be offset by other spending cuts. To explain their stance, they used the analogy of a family that would have to cancel a vacation or delay putting a new roof on its house if something unexpected and costly happened.
Perhaps it was the experience with the Midwest floods that made the emergency designation acceptable. The position that flood assistance should not be provided unless other programs were cut to pay for it ran into sudden and severe public opposition; it was one of the political low points for the Republican efforts in 1995-1996 to reduce federal spending. Or perhaps the lack of controversy that occurred earlier this year when the emergency designation was used to double the size of the supplemental has convinced members that it is a politically viable strategy.
Perhaps the caps are so tight that Congress, in its efforts to get around them, is reverting to ways that only a few short months ago were considered completely unacceptable. After all, following the unexpected 1998 GOP House losses, the assumption was that the Republican base was so angry after Congress agreed to $21 billion in additional spending that the emergency designation would probably not be used. Either that assumption was wrong, the Republican base has mellowed, or Republicans do not think that any of the alternatives (such as cutting spending or voting to raise the caps) would be any better politically.
One final note: Eliminating the emergency label from the veterans' health care spending and offsetting the $3 billion is not as virtuous as it seems. The offset plan is to eliminate $2.5 billion intended to replenish the disaster relief fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
What will happen if there is some type of disaster in fiscal 2000 that requires a FEMA response in excess of what is in the fund? Congress will probably provide the additional funds after labeling them as an emergency. In other words, all Congress might have really done is decide to wait for an emergency to occur to provide the additional spending rather than provide it now when there is no apparent justification for doing so.
Fiscal Y2K Countdown
There is still no word from Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on whether he will delay the start of the August recess so that the House can pass more appropriations before it takes off for the summer. If the recess is delayed, only 21 days remain before the start of the fiscal year. If the recess starts as scheduled at the end of this week, only 18 days remain.
If Mondays and Fridays, when Congress typically does little or no legislative work, are excluded, there are a mere 14 days left before the start of the fiscal year if the recess is delayed, 11 days left if it is not.
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. The answers to last week's question, what happens if Congress and the President agree to appropriations spending in excess of the fiscal 2000 cap, can be divided into three categories: The cynics among us said something to the effect that nothing will happen because Congress and the President can do whatever they feel like doing. The overachievers provided a detailed response that covered every possible scenario. The rest of you responded with the answer that the question really asked (Remember, it said this was a "basic" question). The answer is that a discretionary spending sequester is supposed to occur that reduces budget authority, outlays, or both to the cap.
The judges have awarded two "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirts this week, one to a representative of the basics (Kevin Ring, executive director of the Conservative Action Team in the House of Representatives), and one to the overachievers (Jim Hearn of the Senate Budget Committee). The cynics were disqualified-not for being wrong, but for being too jaded to think that the question was straightforward.
This Week's Question. Here is another technical question that could get you an "I Won A Budget Battle" T-shirt to help you cope with the dog days of summer. The House and Senate are currently working on a tax cut. Tax cuts are covered by the pay-as-you-go rules, which require that revenue decreases be offset by either other revenue increases or reductions in entitlement spending or some combination of the two. The question: What is supposed to happen if the PAYGO rules are not changed and a tax cut is enacted this year?
Send your response to scollender@njdc.com. If there is more than one correct response, the winner will be selected at random from all the correct answers.