House Republicans got another math lesson at the GOP Conference meeting Wednesday, as GOP leaders went over the tough votes that lie ahead if Republicans want to keep their pledge not to spend any of the Social Security surplus.
Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, presented several offsets that could be used to keep fiscal 2000 discretionary spending from busting through the budget cap and consuming the $14 billion non-Social Security surplus.
But at presstime, leaders had not even decided whether to go ahead with a difficult vote on restructuring Earned Income Tax Credit payments at Thursday's Appropriations Committee markup of the Labor-HHS spending bill. The offset would save $8.7 billion in fiscal 2000 outlays by paying eligible low-income workers this benefit monthly instead of in one lump sum. While GOP leaders and Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said it is sound policy, and Young promised that "nobody that gets a check from this program will lose a penny," Democrats charged it unfairly would penalize the working poor.
Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, urged the GOP Conference to pull together behind a program of fiscal discipline-not just to offset fiscal 2000 spending, but to make broader policy changes that would produce permanent budget savings. GOP leaders then hammered their message home at a news conference on protecting the Social Security surplus, where DeLay, an Appropriations panel member, said, "Under no circumstances will I vote to spend one penny of the Social Security surplus on anything other than Social Security." DeLay said the leadership is ready to use offsets, advanced appropriations, emergency designations and mandatory program savings to keep to its pledge. To that end, DeLay also said, "If the president sends us [fiscal 2000] supplementals that are not offset, we will send them right back to him."
Also Wednesday, House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., teamed up to denounce President Clinton's veto of the District of Columbia appropriations bill, which Lott called "a terrible mistake," saying, "The president vetoed this bill because of some really left-wing social agenda." In another budget development, Reps. Ron Lewis, R-Ky., and Virgil Goode, D-Va., were circulating a letter opposing a tobacco tax increase they plan to send Clinton Friday.
The White House is pushing its tobacco tax hike to raise $8 billion for fiscal 2000 and $35 billion over the next five years. The letter calls the proposal "poor fiscal policy" that would harm small tobacco farmers and take about $2 billion in tobacco settlement money away from the states. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Wednesday continued to poke and needle Republicans for the current appropriations situation, saying that "the burden of responsibility is on them now." And Clinton Thursday signed the $28 billion fiscal 2000 Treasury-Postal appropriations bill that will raise the next president's salary to $400,000 per year, and congressional salaries to $141,300.