Last week, Al Gore and George W. Bush became the presumptive presidential nominees of their respective political parties. Three days later the chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees reached a compromise on the amount of appropriated spending that would be assumed in the fiscal 2001 congressional budget resolution. If you had any doubt that the first event has already had and will continue to have a big influence on the second, consider the following.
Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, has already said that he opposes the plan announced by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio. Part of Gramm's reason is that the level of domestic spending in the budget resolution would be above a freeze; part of it is that the overall amount of spending would not provide enough room for the tax cut being pushed by the Bush campaign.
With the 12-to-10 ratio of Republicans to Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee, there may not be enough votes to get the budget resolution to the full Senate unless some Democrats support the Domenici plan and that is highly unlikely this election year. That means the GOP Senate leadership may have to resort to some unusual parliamentary maneuvers.
One of the devices being discussed, for example, is for Domenici to introduce the fiscal 2001 budget resolution as a separate bill if he does not have enough votes to get it approved in committee. According to the budget process rules, the full Senate can debate a Domenici-introduced budget resolution as of April 1, even if the Budget Committee has not reported it out.
This ploy would be based on an assumption that there will be enough votes on the Senate floor to pass a budget resolution. That is anything but certain with Democrats unlikely to provide many (or perhaps any) votes in this pre-election environment-especially for a budget resolution that some will characterize as reducing domestic spending below what the president proposed for education and other politically popular programs.
While the $307 billion for military spending included in the compromise will probably please a majority on Capitol Hill, the $290 billion that would leave for domestic programs could find little support. (Many Republicans have already indicated they want to spend more to avoid creating campaign issues.) This probably means another round of gimmicks similar to what Congress and the White House agreed to last year. There is already some talk, for example, of perhaps as much as $10 billion of the military spending currently included in the Domenici/Kasich compromise being classified as an "emergency," and that same amount being shifted to domestic programs.
The fact that such shifts and maneuvers are already being discussed point directly to what the Domenici/Kasich compromise is intended to be-a campaign document for Republicans. As drafted, the budget resolution would provide less overall spending, more for the Pentagon and a bigger tax cut than what was included in the Clinton budget. All of these are positions that the Republicans on Capitol Hill would like to claim as their own. The budget resolution will imply less for domestic spending than the president proposed, and therefore will appease a good part of the Republican base, but the extensive use of gimmicks later in the year will mean that individual members who want to vote for higher spending will get a chance to do so.
This also means that, in spite of the levels of domestic spending assumed in the budget resolution, the White House will get much of what it wants. This will make it less likely that there will be big veto fights late in the year, thereby avoiding talk of a Republican-caused government shutdown in the months before the election.
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. There were two questions from last week and two "I Won A 2000 Budget Battle" T-shirts to be awarded. The first question asked you to come up with an appropriate grand prize for a new television game show, "Who Wants To Be A Federal Budget Analyst." The winner is Bob Wolownik, a fellow in the Defense Leadership and Management Program at the Pentagon, for his suggestion that the prize be "The right to return each and every week to answer more and more questions." Honorable mention to Richard Kogan of the House Budget Committee for his suggestion of "A gift certificate, good at any hospital, for a lobotomy."
The second question asked was who should host this new game show. More than half of those who responded suggested Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. But the winner of the "I Won A 2000 Budget Battle" T-shirt is Tevi Troy, who works in the Washington office of Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., for his suggestion of Bob Dole. According to Troy, Dole "would ask the questions and give out the prizes in Senate-speak, a slightly better known dialect than budget-speak, to attract a wider audience."
This Week's Question. Last week there were two questions, and this week there is one question with two parts. Both the Clinton budget and the Domenici/Kasich agreement propose discretionary spending way in excess of the current cap for fiscal 2001. The questions: If the Budget Enforcement Act is not amended to raise the cap but spending exceeds the cap, what budget process enforcement procedure is supposed to occur to bring spending back to the cap and when is it supposed to happen? Send your response to scollender@nationaljournal.com by 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 18 and you could win an "I Won A 2000 Budget Battle" T-shirt of your own to wear at the health club while getting ready for bathing suit season.
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