The calendar may say it's July, but Republican congressional leaders this week began thinking about October and how the annual year-end budget battle with the White House will play out-and about the pivotal question of how much money it will take to get out of town by the target adjournment date of Oct. 6.
In a series of bicameral meetings, top House and Senate leaders and their aides started looking ahead to the release next week of budget surplus re-estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. Leaders also discussed how much of the fiscal 2001 non-Social Security surplus they will need to fund fiscal priorities-as well as how much they will need to get the FY2001 appropriations bills signed into law.
The budget resolution limits total discretionary spending for FY2001 to $600.4 billion, well below the $625 billion called for in the administration's budget request.
Last month the Office of Management and Budget announced its revised surplus projections, which put the baseline on-budget surplus for FY2001 at roughly $80 billion. Congressional budget experts anticipate that CBO's number will be in generally the same range as OMB's.
Congress will need the CBO estimates not only to clear the way for President Clinton's approval of the appropriations bills, but to finance the final GOP tax cut package, any Medicare prescription drug benefit Congress may create, another round of "givebacks" to Medicare providers hit hard by cuts mandated in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, buying down more of the nation's publicly held debt, and putting $25 billion in the Medicare trust fund lockbox that both chambers have approved.
But before congressional leaders can think about the price tag to get the FY2001 appropriations bills enacted, they must first get a few more bills passed and conferenced.
Although House and Senate leaders started the year aiming to get all 13 spending bills to the president by the August recess, they have now lowered the bar to around six-although that number is still optimistic, given the Senate's relatively slow progress in passing its bills.
While the House has passed 10 FY2001 bills and should pass the 11th, Foreign Operations, today, the Senate has completed work on only seven.
The Senate has been hampered by procedural hurdles in this year's budget resolution and in budget law that require the FY2001 budget cap to be raised in statute and a section of the 1974 Budget Act to be waived for the Senate Appropriations Committee to move bills that spend more that the existing cap of $541 billion in total discretionary spending.
While the cap may not be legally raised until later in process, GOP sources say that language to waive the Budget Act provision that has stalled the Senate Appropriations Committee could be added to the conference report on the FY2001 Defense bill. A spokeswoman said the panel is preparing an aggressive markup schedule that aims to get all but the District of Columbia bill reported out of committee by the August recess.
To move forward, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, also must fulfill a commitment he made to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, to rescind three provisions of the FY2000 supplemental conference report that would have moved into FY2000 the payment of roughly $4 billion in veterans and Supplemental Security Income benefits, and shifted $2 billion in FY2001 outlays from defense to non-defense appropriations accounts. Some GOP sources have suggested that correction will be put in the Defense conference report, too.
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