At Friday's bicameral GOP leadership meeting, top congressional Republicans continued discussing how to better coordinate budget strategy for the coming year-especially if they are to meet their ambitious schedule of finishing a budget resolution in mid to late March and getting appropriations bills through both chambers before the August recess.
First, they must set a discretionary spending level for fiscal 2001, which in turn will dictate the size of the projected on-budget surplus. Some version of an fiscal 2000 freeze-which the Congressional Budget Office estimates at $586 billion in total fiscal 2001 budget authority and $624 billion in outlays-is likely.
The leaders also must determine how to use the on-budget surplus. Thus far, most Republican leaders and budget writers have come out in favor of some combination of tax cuts and debt reduction rather than new spending, although most also say they want more money devoted to priorities such as defense, education, biomedical research and agriculture.
GOP leaders also must factor in the coming fiscal 2000 supplemental request from the Clinton administration, which will include emergency disaster aid, assistance to farmers and additional funding for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Because the fiscal 2000 budget was balanced without using surplus Social Security revenues, the CBO has forecast the government will run an on-budget surplus of $23 billion in FY2000-money that could cover any supplemental fiscal 2000 spending. M
ost budget hawks want any portion of the $23 billion not used up by the supplemental to go to paying down the publicly held debt. But others in leadership suggest using some of it to cover forward funding enacted in the fiscal 2000 appropriations bills or to further beef up spending on agricultural programs.
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