Congress heads for another spending train wreck

At first glance, it might appear that congressional Republicans have gotten their legislative agenda back on track and that the tired train-wreck metaphors that usually begin to proliferate around this time of year in Washington might actually, mercifully, go away. Republicans, after all, are cutting deals among themselves to pass tax cuts and many of the 13 appropriations bills as they prepare to depart for their long August recess.

Just beneath the surface, however, lies the reality that Republicans are on a railroad to nowhere. Oh dear, that was a train-wreck metaphor. And not the last; by mid-September, train-wreck analogies will, once again, be on the lips of pressies and political pundits all over town.

Republicans are waiting until after their August break to make many of the toughest decisions on spending and tax policy, leaving themselves little time to finish their work before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, when the annual funding measures must be in place. Moreover, GOP leaders do not have only Bill Clinton to worry about. Various factions in their own party are insisting they want a hand in the decisions (witness the moderate-Republican revolt over the House tax bill). And, because of their slim majorities, the GOP leaders cannot afford to write off very many of their members.

The unrosy scenario: Although Republicans have vowed to never again repeat the appropriations debacle of last fall-when a small group of administration officials and members of Congress wrote many of the appropriations bills at the 11th hour-that may be exactly where they are heading.

GOP leaders appear to be setting themselves up to try to cut one mega-deal with President Clinton on tax cuts, spending measures, and maybe Medicare and Social Security reform, too. But before the start of any last-minute negotiations with the White House, the Republicans want to complete their work on the tax cut measure and pass the 13 spending bills. That won't be easy.

On tax cuts, the two chambers have serious philosophical differences, the kind that often bog down House-Senate conference committees. In recent days, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., has said he would like to see a conference report on the tax legislation clear the House and Senate before the recess, which begins on Aug. 6. That way, the tax negotiations will not be left hanging over members' heads when they go home.

"You sit down and you work on Saturday. You work on Sunday," Lott said. "If you give members of a conference [committee] six weeks or a month, they'll take six weeks or a month."

But Lott may be dreaming-something even a Republican or two will privately concede. "There are some pretty significant differences in the way the same resources are allocated," said Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Another GOP source predicted a "very difficult" conference.

The House tax bill includes a 10 percent across-the-board tax cut, while the Senate bill does not. Negotiators will also have to decide whether to include in the final compromise measure a trigger that would delay tax cuts if the interest on the federal debt is not decreased each year.

House GOP leaders were forced to include the trigger mechanism in their version of the tax legislation in order to gain the votes of their moderates. Those moderate members contend that they are standing firm. "A number of us have already passed the word that if they drop the trigger, our vote goes from green to red," said moderate Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. However, one Senate Republican source said of the trigger proposal: "There's no great groundswell of support for it."

Even if conferees hammer out a tax-bill compromise that can pass both chambers, Clinton will certainly veto it. This week, before the Senate began to consider its tax legislation, Vice President Al Gore again derided the GOP proposal as "a risky tax scheme based on cooked books."

Once Clinton vetoes the first tax cut bill, any subsequent one will have to be consensus legislation. This is because the congressional budget resolution approved in April stipulated that only one budget reconciliation/tax cut bill could go to the Senate floor with protection against a filibuster. Opponents will be able to filibuster any subsequent tax cut bill, so it would take 60 votes to get another tax cut measure through the Senate.

At the same time that work is progressing on tax cuts, both chambers continue to slog through the 13 appropriations bills. Republican leaders are intent on passing, before the August recess, all but the thorniest of the appropriations bills-the one covering the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments.

Republican appropriators are short on cash because they are sticking to the tight discretionary-spending caps laid out in the 1997 balanced-budget agreement, and thus are attempting to use some creative bookkeeping. But other lawmakers already are balking.

First, House appropriators designated the entire cost of the 2000 census-which is mandated by the Constitution-as "emergency" spending that is outside the spending caps. Democrats immediately derided that plan. "The Framers of the Constitution sort of snuck up on them," snickered one Democratic aide.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, defended the plan, saying that the Clinton administration's decision to go ahead with the controversial "sampling" technique in the census increased its price tag. "Nobody ever anticipated we would have a two-track census," Armey said.

House Republican appropriators used similar creative budgeting to cover part of the appropriations bill for the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development departments. Their creativity was greeted with a mini-revolt by conservative and moderate Republicans alike.

"Obviously [these are] not emergencies," said moderate Rep. Michael N. Castle, R-Del. "They're bending the rules." Added conservative Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.: "It's not an emergency. We're going to spend all of the $14 billion in the surplus. We didn't get it out of town fast enough."

Republicans also were fighting among themselves over defense spending. The House version of the Defense appropriations bill does not provide funding for the F-22 stealth fighter, while the Senate bill does. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is adamant in his support for the airplane, but acknowledged that he will have to find billions of dollars in cuts elsewhere in the budget to continue the funding.

Worse, the Republican leaders, in their search for cash, also ran afoul of the nation's Governors. When House budgeteers looked hungrily toward entitlement programs as a source of possible funding cuts, the National Governors' Association had an immediate and angry response.

"We remain strongly opposed to funding caps or cuts in mandatory programs as a way to pay for discretionary programs," Delaware Democratic Gov. Thomas R. Carper and Utah Republican Gov. Michael O. Leavitt, the chairman and vice chairman of the NGA, wrote to congressional appropriators.

At bottom, what is vital for congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration is increased funding for their pet programs in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. For many Republicans, the bottom line is tax cuts. "Republicans would only show flexibility on spending if they see flexibility in tax cuts," said a House Republican aide. So a deal combining a tax cut and a spending boost might be possible.

In hopes of encouraging such a deal, Sens. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and John Breaux, D-La., are pushing a tax cut plan of $500 billion-the figure they believe will ultimately be adopted and signed by Clinton. Kerrey and Breaux supported the Republican-sponsored tax cut measure in the Senate Finance Committee.

While Clinton administration officials have thrown cold water on the Kerrey-Breaux idea-calling a $500 billion tax cut too large-Republicans think that the administration may come around. "I don't rule out that this President will move in the direction" of a $500 billion cut, said Armey.

Some analysts are skeptical that the two sides will agree on a far-reaching budget package, given the animosity between them. "There's absolutely zero trust between the White House and the new Republican leadership," said one GOP source.

Congressional Republicans may be at a disadvantage in the coming endgame. They, not Clinton, were largely blamed when disagreements over the appropriations bills led to the federal government shutdowns during the winter of 1995-96. Since then, Clinton has often won major concessions from the Republicans in the annual last-minute budget negotiations.

"Most of what the White House wants, the White House is going to get anyway," said Stanley E. Collender, the managing director of the federal budget consulting group at Fleishman-Hillard Inc. and a columnist for National Journal's Cloakroom and GovExec.com. "The administration doesn't have to deal [on the spending bills]. ... Congress has to come to the administration."