House leaders rally around across-the-board cut

House Republicans are rallying around the idea, championed at a Monday night GOP Conference meeting by House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, of imposing an across-the-board cut on all fiscal 2000 discretionary appropriations as a way to keep total spending from eating into the Social Security surplus.

With the leadership's proposal to save $8.7 billion by changing how the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is paid out effectively dead, many GOP members now consider this their best option for controlling spending, despite the misgivings of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla.

The across-the-board cut idea gained steady momentum throughout the GOP Conference Monday night, although details on how it would work remained sketchy. Following the meeting, GOP Conference Chairman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma said there was "pretty much consensus" on that approach.

Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Edward Porter, R-Ill., whose bill contains the politically explosive EITC proposal, called an across-the-board cut "a very reasonable suggestion that keeps us from spending [the] Social Security reserve. ... And it does so in a fair and even-handed way to all discretionary spending. ... It doesn't change priorities, it just brings down all levels of spending."

But Young said an across-the-board cut "sets a bad precedent. It certainly is the easy way out" of making tough decisions about which programs should be cut and which protected or increased.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., have endorsed the concept, with Nickles having introduced his own across-the-board cut amendment to the Senate Labor-HHS bill being debated on the floor.

-Geoff Earle contributed to this report.