Senate GOP dispute casts shadow on budget process

A struggle over the balance of power between GOP conservatives and moderates on the Senate Budget Committee is keeping the panel's chairman-in-waiting, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., from filling the two open slots on the panel. The simmering dispute could presage an even more protracted struggle over the fiscal year 2002 budget resolution than the weeks-long impasse that stalled the committee last year. Last year, led by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, a senior Budget panel member, committee conservatives withheld their support for the fiscal year 2001 budget plan Domenici and former House Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, hammered out with the bicameral GOP leadership, complaining that it set the total FY2001 discretionary spending level too high. Although Gramm eventually got Domenici and Lott to agree to several provisions meant to enforce greater fiscal discipline, Congress passed fiscal year 2001 appropriations bills that would allow total discretionary spending of $633.1 billion in budget authority and $643 billion in outlays. The fiscal year 2001 budget resolution, however, called for discretionary spending limits of $600.2 billion in budget authority and $625.2 billion in outlays. Gramm has lost two conservative Budget Committee allies with the defeats of former Sens. Rod Grams, R-Minn., and Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., leaving as his only natural ally Sen. Judd Gregg, R- N.H., who was among the conservative holdouts on the fiscal year 2001 budget resolution. Gramm has told CongressDaily he wants to get two other conservatives, Sens. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and George Allen, R-Va., to join the panel. But at the same time, both Senate Appropriations ranking member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Senate Armed Services ranking member John Warner, R-Va., want one of the two open Budget Committee seats. And now that Senate Democrats have named current Appropriations Chairman Byrd to the Budget panel, Stevens could be expected to push even harder to join his former ranking member on Budget. According to some Senate GOP sources, conservative members are particularly opposed to Stevens getting a seat on the Budget panel, fearing it would give him even more leverage to increase spending beyond levels that GOP Conference budget hawks support. And they expect Lott to take their views into account in naming senators to the committee, said one GOP source. But Lott, as well as Domenici, must also aim for a lineup that can produce a budget resolution on a committee that is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. A spokesman for the committee said that reporting out a bipartisan budget resolution remains Domenici's first goal, and that Domenici "has had several positive meetings with" the panel's new top Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, to that effect. "If it can be," Domenici's spokesman said, "you've got the right man to do it." As for whether Domenici, who also will chair the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee,favors naming Stevens to the Budget panel, the spokesman said,"In keeping with his ideas on budget reform, [Domenici] has always said that would be a good idea to have the chairmen of both of the money committees on the Budget Committee."