Senate begins debate on fiscal 2007 budget plan

The Senate began debate Monday on Budget Chairman Judd Gregg's, R-N.H., $2.8 trillion fiscal 2007 budget resolution, with GOP leaders aiming for passage by the end of this week while continuing to negotiate debate rules for legislation to increase the statutory debt limit to nearly $9 trillion.

The Treasury Department has warned that the Senate must act on the debt ceiling, which passed the House last year, before departing Friday for the St. Patrick's Day recess or face a virtual government shutdown.

"The Democratic leader and I are working on an agreement for the consideration of that bill," Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said on the floor. "Needless to say, there is a lot of work to be done prior to the adjournment."

Senators were making opening statements on the budget resolution Monday, with 50 hours of debate and amendments to be followed by a lengthy series of stacked votes, likely Thursday. The debt limit hike, totaling $781 billion, is expected to be the last order of business before adjourning for the recess, and Republicans were seeking to limit Democrats to three amendments before a vote on final passage.

The budget resolution lays out assumptions of spending and tax policies during the next five years. There are no reconciliation instructions -- except for a provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration -- to cut entitlement spending or taxes, as Senate GOP leaders realized that would be futile in an election year.

"It is important when you're doing a budget, of course, to be realistic about what the opportunities are, the demands are, what the needs are for saving money, what the tax structure will be of the country," Gregg said on the floor. "We've attempted to do that in this budget."

Gregg said Bush was "almost heroic" in sending up a budget plan proposing to trim $35 billion from Medicare over five years, which he supports. "It became very clear from statements on the other side of the aisle that they were opposed to that," Gregg said, acknowledging that "on our side of the aisle there was also a fair amount of hesitancy on that issue."

Gregg's budget plan attempts to stanch the growth of emergency spending, which does not have to fit within discretionary spending caps, by proposing a new 60-vote hurdle on amendments bringing total emergency funds in fiscal 2007 to more than $90 billion.

That figure "would run the state of New Hampshire for about 20 years," Gregg said. The historical average is roughly $16 billion for each fiscal year for unforeseen events such as natural disasters.

Greta Wodele contributed to this report.