Senate budget chairman to propose five-year plan
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., expressed his intention Tuesday to write a five-year budget plan as part of the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, although he stressed that would be a "collective decision," echoing similar plans by the White House and House Republicans.
Congressional Democrats have lambasted the Bush administration Office of Management and Budget for proposing shorter-term budget outlooks and are expected to write an alternative, 10-year budget.
Nickles called for an "aggressive schedule" to produce a budget resolution by the April 15 deadline and said April 9 might have to be the cut-off point, since the Senate begins its spring recess April 12. Nickles said his budget would aim to cut the deficit by more than the Bush administration's goal of halving it over five years, and he does not intend to extend all tax cuts previously enacted.
While acknowledging the difficulty of getting enough Democratic votes to pass a budget resolution in an election year, Nickles said it would be crucial to keep spending down. He cited 81 points of order lodged last year against spending proposals over and above the fiscal 2004 budget resolution. Appropriators largely stayed within those limits, although they exceeded the $785.6 billion cap for technical reasons, such as emergency spending for the Iraq war.
Nickles also cited the looming reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, which Senate Republicans have budgeted at $311 billion over six years, as a key test of the chamber's willingness to hold spending down. That measure is due on the floor next week.
Nickles said discretionary budget authority grew 2.9 percent last year, and President Bush has proposed a 4 percent increase this year. Less than 1 percent of that is expected to be targeted to non-defense, non-homeland-security spending. "I'd like to see us freeze it," Nickles said. He added that he did not expect a large war supplemental this year.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said his panel had "produced a very austere budget last year" that was adhered to with few exceptions. "Let me say as we set the table for the coming year: We'll do it again." At a hearing to examine CBO's new 10-year deficit forecast, Nussle said he was "increasingly impressed" with the administration's proposals on the spending side to decrease the deficit. "We need the president to lead the effort to control spending. We can't do it from this committee alone."
House Budget ranking member John Spratt, D-S.C., said hopes for a bipartisan budget bill this year would probably collapse, since Democrats probably would try to introduce some scaling-back of the tax cuts to lower the deficit. "If we said both revenues and spending have to be part of the solution or else, the Republicans would fold their tents," Spratt said.
Meanwhile, the tough talk on spending emanating from the White House and GOP budget writers, particularly on the House side, does not bode well for the fiscal 2005 appropriations process, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Tuesday. "We won't be able to finish" before the end of fiscal 2004 this September, "particularly with some [spending bills] that will come from the other side," he said.
Stevens said he would be very surprised if all 13 appropriations bills were completed before the election season begins in earnest, and only three -- Defense, Military Construction and Homeland Security -- are likely to be approved before September. Helping matters will be the absence of another supplemental, possibly until early in calendar year 2005, he added.
Some House conservatives already are discussing a full-year continuing resolution to fund and non-defense and non-homeland security programs.
But in his final year as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Stevens said he would not fold under criticism from budget hawks about excessive earmarking. "They're congressional priorities, not some bureaucrat's priorities," he said.