Balanced budget goal remains difficult
Even before the economic stimulus plan died in the Senate earlier this month, House conservatives and Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, had begun pushing for Congress to write a balanced budget plan for fiscal 2003--causing no small amount of heartburn for Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, and the White House, which has proposed a deficit-spending 2003 budget.
Conservatives argue that President Bush's budget could easily be balanced because $77 billion of the $80 billion deficit it would run is due to the stimulus. They have called for setting aside stimulus money in a reserve fund that could be tapped if legislation were enacted, and otherwise balancing the budget with spending cuts.
While their approach may add up on paper, the reality of trying to achieve balance may prove much more difficult, given that lawmakers of both parties have already pledged their allegiance to the administration's defense numbers--while vowing to restore the White House's cuts to domestic programs that enjoy broad bipartisan support.
At the top of that list is highway funding, which the White House would cut by $8.5 billion as a result of the statutory formula in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. Appropriators and authorizers alike have vowed to restore the money--and in an election year, few incumbents are likely to vote against highway dollars for their states, regardless of their budget hawk credentials.
Nor do legislators want to oppose something as politically popular as Medicare reform and prescription drug coverage. But the administration's budget provided $190 billion over 10 years, while Congress last year set aside $300 billion in its budget and is unlikely to provide less this year.
In addition, the Office of Management and Budget uses a baseline that projects significantly lower increases in Medicare costs than the Congressional Budget Office, whose numbers Congress customarily uses to draft its budget.
Deep cuts are also proposed for the Army Corps of Engineers, Community Development Block Grants, military construction and agricultural research--all bastions of lawmakers' projects that Congress has shown no inclination to pare back.
Nor did Congress follow through on the president's fiscal 2002 effort to slash the Clinton-era Community Oriented Policing Services program, making it unlikely COPS will be reduced as Bush proposed again in 2003.
Other bipartisan favorites slated for cuts that Congress is unlikely to take a knife to are the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Navy shipbuilding, and numerous health, education and job training programs.
Bush's budget also does not fund such congressional priorities as Securities and Exchange Commission pay parity and parity for civilian and military federal government employees.
Nor does it include fiscal 2003 funding for Afghanistan, and far less for frontline Central Asian states in the war on terrorism than many in Congress say is needed. Meanwhile, it zeroes out the popular Child Survival and Health Fund.
Finally, conservatives might find themselves frustrated when CBO comes out with its estimate of the president's budget, which experts predict will pump up the projected 2003 deficit by at least $55 billion because of baseline differences.