House budget cuts deeper than president's request

House Republicans are proposing almost $18 billion more in mandatory spending cuts than President Bush requested, while making additional allowances for military costs in Iraq and Afghanistan and accommodating much of Bush's tax cuts, as well as a fix for the alternative minimum tax he did not include in his budget.

The House Budget Committee began work Wednesday on its $2.57 trillion fiscal 2006 budget resolution, and planned to work late into the evening to deal with close to 30 Democratic amendments.

House Republicans are likely to bring the budget blueprint, which proposes a 2.1 percent increase in discretionary spending to $843 billion, to the floor next Wednesday.

Senate Budget Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., planned to unveil his version on Wednesday.

All told, the proposals from House Budget Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, assume a projected fiscal 2005 deficit of $394 billion would decline to $376 billion next year and $229 billion in fiscal 2009 -- meeting Bush's goal of halving the deficit within five years. Nussle said the budget would hit that target because of its focus on mandatory spending, which is 55 percent of the total budget and growing each year.

"This budget chooses, as tough as it may be, to begin dealing with this problem now," he said.

The budget resolution would require House committees to come up with $68.6 billion in mandatory savings proposals over the next five years, including $7.8 billion in fiscal 2006. That is almost $18 billion more than the $51 billion proposed by the White House as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The House tax cut target is $106 billion, enough to extend most of Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and provide a temporary patch to keep more taxpayers from falling under the alternative minimum tax. Of that total, $45 billion would be protected under reconciliation instructions, with the House Ways and Means Committee given a June 24 deadline.

The House budget allows for $81 billion in fiscal 2005 supplemental spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Bush budget does, but also for $50 billion in fiscal 2006. It contains no language on Social Security overhaul proposals.

"The budget put forth by House Republicans shares all the flaws of the president's budget," said House Budget ranking member John Spratt, D-S.C.

The mandatory cuts would fall most heavily on programs within the purview of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which is being asked to come up with $21.4 billion in savings.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, with a $20 billion target, is expected to focus on Medicaid and extending broadcast spectrum auction authority, among other measures.

The House Ways and Means Committee has an $18.7 billion savings goal. Programs under the purview of the Agriculture Committee would get a slight reprieve from the Bush budget, with a total of $5.3 billion in required savings, down from about $7.5 billion. House Republicans are expected to target non-farm programs such as food stamps.

The budget sets a Sept. 16 deadline for producing the savings, which would then be packaged together as a "reconciliation" bill that would be protected from filibusters in the Senate. The Senate budget resolution will allow for $70 billion in protected tax cuts and about $40 billion in mandatory savings, although unlike the House it is expected to assume revenues from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.