New Senate budget chair quickly makes waves

The first time that President Bush met Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., at the beginning of the year, he called him "Senator Dorgan." Admittedly, it's easy to mix up North Dakota's Senators--the two bespectacled Democrats are constantly together on Capitol Hill. These days, Conrad is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and he's fond of saying things like, "This new Administration, only six months after assuming responsibility for the fiscal affairs of this country, after grabbing the steering wheel, has driven us right into the fiscal ditch." Chances are that Bush knows full well who Kent Conrad is by now. In fact, Conrad has done a pretty good job of distinguishing himself to a lot of folks this year. Upon taking over as the Budget Committee's ranking Democrat in January, the boyish-looking 52-year-old made clear his ambitions to assume a far-higher profile than did his predecessor, former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. And Conrad--a close ally of Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota--quickly succeeded in establishing himself as a key Democratic strategist and attack dog. Early on, Conrad, who was North Dakota's tax commissioner before his election to the Senate in 1986, demonstrated his expertise as a nimble numbers cruncher by making a slew of appearances on television talk shows, at press conferences, and on the Senate floor in which he slammed the White House's budget and tax proposals as fiscally irresponsible. "He has shattered anyone in the Senate in the use of charts," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D. "It's not about sound bites, as anyone who has listened to one of his budget tirades knows." Likewise, a senior Senate Democratic aide said that it's been "some period of time" since the chamber's Democrats had such an articulate voice on the budget. The aide added: "People may have underestimated how hard he was willing to work." Thanks to the Democratic takeover of the Senate last month, the once-underestimated North Dakotan is now the Budget chairman. At this point in most years, that title wouldn't mean much, because the work of the House and Senate Budget committees is mostly done, once Congress approves a budget resolution in April or May. But Conrad has managed to keep himself in the news. In recent weeks, he has been at the forefront of the effort by congressional Democrats to spread the word that economic forecasts due out next month are expected to show that the budget surplus is far less than previously expected--and to blame Republican tax cuts as the culprit. Conrad even scheduled a July 12 hearing by his committee to grill Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. about the situation. "We are left with a budget with no resources to make good on the commitments made to the American people to strengthen defense and improve education," Conrad declared recently. Moreover, Conrad is the beneficiary of an unusual legislative twist that gives the Budget chairmen sustained prominence this year. In the budget resolution approved in May, Congress granted the Budget chairmen the authority to release a "reserve fund" of surplus money to the appropriators, once Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent his strategic review of the Pentagon to Capitol Hill. Rumsfeld's June 27 request for $18.4 billion in additional fiscal 2002 defense spending keeps Conrad, and House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, in the spotlight. The ability of the two chairmen to now tap this reserve fund gives them considerable sway over how this year's appropriations battles will play out. Republicans, of course, never dreamed that the fate of the reserve fund would partially rest with a Democratic Budget chairman. And Conrad is taking a hard view of the reserve fund: He says there may be no real surplus left once the new economic estimates come out, thus putting the Social Security and Medicare trust funds in jeopardy. In May, the Congressional Budget Office said that some $24 billion--the amount of surplus money outside of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds--was available for the reserve fund in fiscal 2002. But Conrad has predicted that because of the economic downturn, the CBO could decrease that estimate by as much as $20 billion in August. If Congress tries to squeeze from the reserve fund $12 billion for defense and $3 billion for education, the Medicare trust fund will be raided to the tune of some $11 billion in fiscal 2002, according to Conrad. By next year, both the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds would have to be tapped, he has said. On the other side of the Capitol, Nussle is trying to stay calm until the new economic estimates are released. "To make emphatic statements without the facts to back it up is premature," he said. But Nussle also said he has met with Conrad since Senate Democrats took over and likes what he sees. "We speak the same language," Nussle said. "His commitment [to fiscal discipline] has been second to none, so I take him as a valuable partner." Conrad agrees that this commitment has been an overriding force for him. "If anybody has followed my career, they can see I'm devoted to fiscal responsibility," Conrad said in a recent interview. "I've seen the damage that can be done by abandoning fiscal responsibility. I don't want to be any part of it." Conrad began his professional career in 1974 working in North Dakota's tax office after earning a bachelor's degree at Stanford and an MBA from George Washington University. At the time, Byron Dorgan--Conrad's senior by about six years--was the state's tax commissioner. Conrad worked on Dorgan's unsuccessful House campaign in 1974, and the two men's lives have been intertwined ever since. In 1980, when Dorgan won election to the House, Conrad was elected to replace him as tax commissioner. And for many years, Conrad's wife, Lucy Calautti, served on Dorgan's House and Senate staff. "We almost never disagree," Dorgan said of Conrad. "We've worked together for so long, we can finish each other's sentences." So it was easy for Bush to mix up the two earlier this year. (By the way, Bush sent multiple apologies to Conrad for the confusion.) Conrad ran for the Senate in 1986 and, surprisingly, defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Mark Andrews. "He was a 36-year-old state tax commissioner who was taking on our most well-established political figure in North Dakota," Pomeroy recalled. "He overcame huge odds." In his 1986 campaign, Conrad pledged not to run for a second Senate term unless "the federal deficit, the trade deficit, and real interest rates will be brought under control." By 1992, it was debatable whether those conditions had been met, and as Conrad mulled whether to run again, his wife was the victim of a violent mugging on Capitol Hill. Despite his popularity in the polls, Conrad announced in April of that year that he was retiring because his pledge was unfulfilled. "Coming out of the state revenue office, he took it very personally that the government was running in red ink," Pomeroy said. With Conrad having announced his retirement from the Senate, Dorgan, then a six-term House member, launched a campaign for the Senate seat. But in September 1992, North Dakota's other Senator, the elderly Democrat Quentin Burdick, died in office. In a highly unusual turn of events, Conrad ran for Burdick's Senate seat in a special election that fall while holding the state's other Senate seat. On December 14, 1992, Conrad was sworn in to fill Burdick's term, and a few hours later, Dorgan was sworn in to take Conrad's former Senate seat. After a couple of years working together in the Senate on issues such as protecting North Dakota wheat farmers, Conrad and Dorgan burst into the spotlight during the 1995 debate over a proposed constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. Senate Republicans were one vote short of winning passage of the amendment and needed to woo a Democrat to their side. The only possible converts were Dorgan and Conrad, although Conrad was seen as the key. In one of the most dramatic displays on Capitol Hill in recent memory, Republicans clustered around Conrad on the Senate floor one evening in March 1995 trying to come up with legislative language that he would find acceptable as a vote neared on the amendment. When the Republicans were unsuccessful, the Senate adjourned for the night without voting, and the amendment later went down to defeat. "I was fully ready to consider a constitutional amendment on a balanced budget," Conrad said in the recent interview. But he said that he changed his position when he discovered that Republican proponents included the Social Security trust fund as part of the budget calculations. "It was an attempt to put into the United States Constitution a definition of a balanced budget that was phony," Conrad said. Republicans, for their part, were livid. Some said that every time they tried to make changes to the amendment, Conrad would demand other changes. Now, Conrad is poised to make other decisions that may prove equally unpopular with some of his colleagues. If necessary, he is prepared to refuse to release the reserve fund that he controls, even though both Republicans and Democrats are demanding more money for agriculture, education, and defense programs. Some lawmakers already are showing signs of frustration. "I think there are real problems because of the budget and the tax cuts," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who serves as chairman of both the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee. Conrad "has painted the worst-case scenario," Harkin added. "I'm an optimist.... He's painting a pessimistic picture of everything." Conrad disagreed with that characterization. "This has nothing to do with pessimism or optimism," he said. "It has to do with the best estimates." Conrad realizes that if budget estimates continue to go south, he will be forced to write a budget next year that will disappoint his fellow Democrats. When he has met with them to show them the possibility of declining surpluses, he said: "They were shocked. They've heard for months that we've had surpluses. To hear that it's overcommitted is stunning." And Conrad added: "Next year's budget is going to be extremely difficult if what the forecasters are saying is true." Nevertheless, Conrad said he does not believe that Democrats should attempt to roll back the tax cuts that Bush recently signed into law. "I don't think it's fruitful to talk about revisiting the tax cut," he said. "Sixty people in the Senate voted for it--and clearly, the President would veto any bill." In the meantime, though, Conrad is prepared to continue to make sure that George W. Bush at least knows his name.