Bush budget battered from many sides

President Bush's $2.4 trillion, fiscal 2005 budget request ran into grumbling on its release Monday from nearly every constituency on Capitol Hill, illustrating the tough task ahead for GOP leaders aiming to deliver an election-year win for the White House.

The budget contains about $818.4 billion in discretionary spending, with about $386.2 billion of that for programs other than defense and homeland security -- a microscopic 0.5 percent rate of growth. It would eliminate 65 programs and reduce funding for 63 others, saving $4.9 billion in fiscal 2005, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Under the administration's projections, the deficit would be cut by more than half in dollar terms, to $241 billion in fiscal 2007, and as a percentage of gross domestic product to 2.1 percent in fiscal 2006 -- both projections beating the administration's target of cutting the deficit in half over five years.

While GOP leaders and the House and Senate Budget Committee chairmen gamely defended the administration's budget, it mollified few on Capitol Hill, including members of their own party. Such dissension in the ranks indicates the road to a 218-vote House majority on a budget resolution might be difficult to come by -- not to mention in the more closely divided Senate.

"While he showed restraint in several areas, the total spending is still too high," said Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina -- chairwoman of the House Republican Study Committee -- who leads a bloc of more than 90 House lawmakers calling for cuts or a freeze in many discretionary programs.

Across the Capitol, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a leading budget hawk, blasted a proposed $250 million increase for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in his state as "unacceptable," given the deficit.

Estimates compiled by the House Budget Committee Democratic staff peg the cost of extending and making permanent expiring tax breaks as Bush proposes at $1.43 trillion over fiscal 2005-2014, excluding necessary adjustments to the alternative minimum tax and Bush's proposed bonus depreciation plan.

The prospect of adding to the deficit through further tax cuts has moderate Republicans, as well as Democrats in both chambers, concerned. Moderate Senate Republicans, including Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine, said Congress should not just rubber stamp Bush's tax proposals. Snowe said in a statement, "It is vital that we scrutinize both sides of the federal ledger -- for spending and for revenues" during the budget process.

Another moderate, Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., said "everything has to be on the table" to reduce the deficit, including all discretionary and mandatory spending, including defense and homeland security, as well as new tax cuts and making old ones permanent. "You can't come close to cutting the deficit in half just dealing with that 17 percent of the budget" that makes up non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending, Castle said.

In addition to making taxes part of the solution, Castle said, Congress should revisit some increases for homeland security. "You can't tell me that [the Transportation Security Administration] is efficiently run," he said, also suggesting some of the Pentagon's weapons programs should be re-evaluated.

Castle said he agreed with a number of policy proposals espoused by GOP conservatives, including a reduction in the number of unrequested earmarks included in annual spending bills. He fell short, however, of endorsing a proposal announced Monday by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to impose an earmark moratorium.

Bush's plan received no applause from the moderate-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats who style themselves budget hawks. Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas and a Blue Dog cochairman, said record deficits, the trade imbalance and the pending retirement of large numbers of the Baby Boom generation threaten "an economic perfect storm," and the budget "does nothing to prepare our nation to deal with these economic dangers."

With perhaps the most to lose under Bush's spending proposals, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., said his panel "will be carefully scrutinizing" the proposal "to see if we can afford them in a lean budget year. They will have to be reconciled with proven programs and traditional congressional priorities."

Even an appropriations "cardinal" like Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., whose subcommittee would see an increased allocation, acknowledged, "The administration and this subcommittee will have a difficult task of convincing our colleagues of the need for this increase."