Bush takes his turn at axing lawmakers' pet projects

The new President came to Washington promising to change the way that Congress spends money. In his first budget, he targeted what he considered to be "pork" projects championed by individual House members and Senators, and he vowed to veto any appropriations bills loaded with funding earmarked for such projects. And in his drive to limit federal spending, the President, a former governor, took on the Capitol Hill leadership of his own party.

George W. Bush in 2001? Nope. Jimmy Carter in 1977.

Shortly after Carter took office, he developed a hit list of local water projects--to build bridges, dams, and the like in lawmakers' home states--that he viewed as wasteful. He then spent much of the spring and early summer fighting with the Democratic-led Congress to get his way. Relations got so bad that at one point, then-Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., told Carter that the President's proposal for a tax rebate was dead unless the water-project fight was settled. Carter ended up accepting a compromise--some nine of 18 projects were killed--but appropriators promised that even those projects would eventually be resurrected.

Bush, in releasing his full budget for fiscal 2002 on April 9, laid out similar, but even more daunting, challenges for himself. Not only did he target water projects by calling on Congress not to fund any new Army Corps of Engineers endeavors, he also proposed trimming other federal programs that traditionally have provided local grants, such as the Community Development Block Grant program and the Economic Development Administration. Members of Congress love such programs because the projects allow them to claim credit at local ribbon-cutting ceremonies for bringing home the federal dough.

Bush, however, has made clear that he wants fewer ribbon cuttings. "Washington is known for pork," the President said on April 9. "This budget funds our needs without the fat." The Office of Management and Budget identified some $16 billion in earmarks for members of Congress in the current budget, and proposed cutting around $8 billion of them, OMB Director Mitch Daniels told reporters last week.

Overall, Bush's fiscal 2002 budget would boost discretionary spending by 4 percent, far less than the 8.6 percent increase in fiscal 2001. The Education Department would receive an 11.5 percent increase, the largest for any Cabinet department, while spending on the National Institutes of Health would grow by 13.5 percent. The budget would provide a 4 percent boost for the Pentagon, although that number could change once the Defense Department completes its top-to-bottom review.

"It's a budget that protects taxpayers, protects children, protects our surplus," Bush said. "It represents compassionate conservatism. It's a budget that sets priorities."

But in order for departments such as Education to receive double-digit increases--and to allow room for Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut--some programs had to take heavy hits. Agriculture funding would drop by around 6 percent, and spending on energy programs would drop by 10 percent. Bush would also redirect money from former President Clinton's cherished COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program, and instead use it to fund school security programs.

In response to Bush's budget, Democratic lawmakers charged that their Republican colleagues had already committed themselves to the prize-big tax cuts--without knowing the bitter price.

"Well over a month ago, the President sent Congress a sketchy budget outline that failed to explain how he was going to pay for his massive $2 trillion-plus tax cut," House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., declared. "Today, at long last, the President has produced a more detailed budget that makes clear he leaves no room for essential national needs and wants to cut scores of services and programs vital to the well-being of millions of families to pay for his tax cut."

The spending outline that the President released in late February contained enough details for the House and Senate to recently pass budget resolutions setting broad spending categories and allowing for the tax cut. The House on March 28 approved the Bush budget largely intact. But on April 6, the Senate--in a move engineered by its emboldened moderates--reduced the President's tax cut to about $1.2 trillion and boosted discretionary spending by 7 percent (although Daniels put the figure at closer to 8 percent).

After the Easter recess, the two chambers will reconcile their budget resolutions in conference committee, and administration officials have vowed to fight for the House-passed plan. "The Senate version, in addition to being short on tax relief for the American people, is long or excessive on the spending side," Daniels said.

But this week, as members read over the full Bush budget that spelled out the painful spending cuts required for the tax cut, even some House GOP insiders seemed to be having second thoughts. A key House Republican aide said he expects the final budget resolution to provide a spending increase closer to the 7 percent or 8 percent that the Senate prefers. Given the 50-50 Senate split, budget conferees will have to concentrate on what is "do-able," said James Dyer, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.

Since the budget resolution is never sent to the President, Bush won't have the option of signing or vetoing it. But Congress routinely ignores the non-binding resolution as the budget season progresses, and Bush can try to persuade lawmakers to more fully accept his proposals as they complete the actual appropriations and tax bills later this year.

In Dyer's view, however, Bush will have a hard time persuading lawmakers to abandon the earmarks for local projects that they so love. Dyer said earmarks are a normal part of the process, are needed to pass the annual spending bills, and are unlikely to die anytime soon. "In the end, every one of them is there because Congress voted on them," Dyer said. "I don't think a reasonable person would think that it would end anytime in the near future. It has always been considered a congressional prerogative, and I would think it would continue to be a congressional prerogative."

Still, the White House disputes the notion that it must tolerate a huge number of earmarks. "Member projects ... have been a part of the congressional process for a long time, and we're not so naive as to believe they can be ended overnight," Daniels said. "However, I would not say that last year, or the year before, were normal years, because the number of these earmarks has exploded, more than tripling in the last two years."

Back in 1977, Byrd certainly thought that programs aimed at helping specific geographical areas were a high priority. And in at least one case this year, current Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., agrees. Lott is unhappy with the Bush administration's proposal to end the shipbuilding loan guarantee program, which would have a huge impact on a key industry in his home state.

"We must continue to fully fund the maritime security program and increase funding for the Title XI shipbuilding loan guarantee program to historic levels," Lott and Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said in a January letter to Bush.

Other programs that might be viewed as pork also have their congressional defenders. Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, this week contended that although Bush has proposed a $600 million cut for the Army Corps of Engineers, Republican lawmakers won't support such a decrease.

"I know a lot of Republican members who will tell me, off the record, that if it is put to a recorded vote, they won't stand for it because they've got water projects in their districts," Spratt said.

In the bigger budget picture, Spratt and other Democrats this week insisted that they don't want this year to progress the way the past few have, with Congress setting no real ceiling on spending early on--thus allowing appropriators and administration officials to make the key decisions during marathon negotiating sessions in the fall. According to Spratt, Congress and the White House should set a reasonable level of discretionary spending now, and then force Congress to stick to it.

Dyer agreed that a spending ceiling should be agreed upon and enforced. "The process has fallen in [disarray] because members are told to vote for this [budget resolution] with a wink and a nod, knowing that they'll get their spending in the end," he said.

In recent years, there was significant pressure from the White House to provide big spending increases in the end. But conservative Republicans pointedly note that times have changed. "President Bush has proposed a budget which more than provides for America's priorities," said Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, formerly known as the Conservative Action Team. "Yet the Democrats still want more. Apparently, they have become addicted to the dramatic spending increases President Clinton extorted from Congress over the past three years."

In 1977, Carter vowed to veto any appropriations bills that he deemed too fat. He didn't veto any. These days, the White House is also vowing vetoes. "If Congress is going to pass porked-up appropriations measures, they will run into a veto down at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.," Vice President Dick Cheney said on ABC's This Week on April 8.

But, as demonstrated by the Senate's recent budget vote, Congress may have to pencil in more spending than Bush wants, simply to get appropriations bills through one chamber or the other. If Bush vetoes any of the bills, a standoff costing him valuable political capital early in his Administration might result. And as Carter learned, it just may not be worth the fight.