House and Senate zero in on budget agreement

House and Senate lawmakers opened a conference on the fiscal 2001 budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 290) Tuesday, with members aiming to complete an agreement so that both chambers can pass the budget blueprint by the April 15 deadline.

Budgeteers simply made opening statements Tuesday morning, with several lawmakers paying tribute to retirees Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, the House Budget Committee chairman, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., the Senate panel's senior Democrat. The panel then broke to enter a "closed session" to complete the conference report.

But according to sources, the deal is already about "90 percent" done, and the final version should emerge in time to ratify an agreement before lawmakers leave Washington at the end of the week for their Easter recess. The hope is to have the completed report before the House Rules Committee Wednesday in order to take it to the House floor Thursday. The Senate is expected to follow suit with a vote of its own, either Thursday or Friday.

Committee sources said the final agreement will approve a discretionary spending figure for fiscal 2001 close to $600 billion, or the middle ground between the Senate resolution's $603 billion and the House-approved level of $596.5 billion. Defense spending will also be closer to the Senate-passed level of $310.8 billion, which is about $3.5 billion higher than the House level.

As for a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the conference report is expected to set aside $20 billion over 5 years for the much-talked-about but still-unauthorized program, with another $20 billion set aside for Medicare reform. The dollar amounts will likely be contingent on a Medicare reform bill being signed into law, according to a source. That will be a departure from the Senate resolution, which would release funds for a prescription drug benefit by September if the Senate Finance Committee is unable to report out a bill.

The conference report is also expected to provide at least $150 billion in tax relief over five years. The House's $50 billion reserve fund, which could be used for either tax relief or debt reduction, will be cut in the conference report, with some of it being allocated for higher discretionary spending, according to a committee source. But sources were confident that new budget projections would ultimately increase that reserve fund level back to the $50 billion mark, and perhaps even higher.

While the conference report is expected to reject the $1.6 billion added to the Senate resolution by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., for health research, it will likely split the difference on other key spending priorities, notably education and science, sources said.

In addition, the conference report will order two reconciliation tax cut bills, compared to the four mandated in the House bill and the one such bill called for in the Senate version.

Democrats indicated at the conference meeting Tuesday that they will continue to oppose the budget resolution, which they said assumed "unrealistic" spending levels that no one believes will actually be enacted. The resolution is already about $20 billion shy of what President Clinton has proposed for the upcoming fiscal year.

Lautenberg suggested that the resolution's bid for bigger tax breaks at the expense of domestic spending will only lead to the all-too-familiar scenario of an end-of-the-year appropriations train wreck, in which all notions of fiscal discipline will disappear as lawmakers eagerly make deals to get out of town and hit the campaign trail.

"At the end of the day, the final conference report is likely to bear little resemblance to what actually happens," Lautenberg said. "The conference report will have long since been relegated to the Internet archives, and the whole budget process will have been even more challenged than it already is."

But Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who is also a member of the Appropriations Committee, insisted that Congress is "not going to be in that position" this year, even as he acknowledged the "difficult" task appropriators have in store for them.