Budget resolution on hold while negotiations continue
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Tuesday that an agreement on the fiscal 2005 budget resolution probably would not come until next week as the search continues for a deal on pay/go budget enforcement rules.
Frist said those talks would continue this week with Senate deficit hawks holding out for some application of pay/go rules to tax cuts, and at a meeting Tuedsay night with House Republican leaders and President Bush at the White House. Senate Budget Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., and House Budget Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, met briefly Tuesday to discuss the budget resolution, but aides said it was more of an informal session to catch up after the Easter recess.
A Nussle spokesman said they would meet again later this week but that a final agreement was unlikely to occur until next week, when both the House and Senate could act on a final conference report. The pay/go issue continues to stymie completion of the budget, which is once again past its rarely met April 15 statutory deadline.
A senior Senate aide said Senate GOP leaders would meet with the House leadership late this week or early next week "and tell them what's possible" as far as getting the necessary 51 votes on the Senate floor. A handful of Senate moderates are considered swing votes on the resolution, depending on how a compromise on pay/go budget rules is structured. Most Democrats and at least two Republicans -- Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and John McCain of Arizona and possibly a third, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine -- are considered likely to oppose a compromise that exempts tax legislation from pay/go rules, which require offsetting revenue increases for any new entitlement spending or tax cuts. Senate Republican leaders must forge a deal with House counterparts who argue pay/go requirements for tax legislation could hinder future tax cuts, while placating Senate GOP deficit hawks and possibly a few moderate Democrats.
A coalition of budget watchdog groups today called on lawmakers to apply pay/go rules to tax cuts as well as new entitlement spending in order to reduce the deficit.
Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, called any potential compromise that exempts tax cuts protected under reconciliation instructions in the budget "deceptive advertising" because other tax legislation was considered unlikely to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Greenstein said that because the resolution would simply set an overall dollar figure for a future tax cut bill, but not specify which policies would be included, lawmakers could simply move popular expiring "middle class" tax cuts outside of reconciliation and substitute more controversial tax cuts.
A Senate GOP aide agreed, noting that the Finance Committee could decide to move other tax bills under reconciliation. The watchdog groups, which also included the Concord Coalition, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Committee for Economic Development, released revised deficit figures arguing that if current policies continue without tax cut offsets, the fiscal 2005 to fiscal 2014 cumulative deficit could reach $4.6 trillion.