Panel will consider budget resolution this week

Senate Democrats will get a preview on Tuesday of Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad's fiscal 2010 budget resolution, which does not include the reconciliation process to evade a filibuster on health and climate change legislation, Conrad said Monday.

The panel will begin consideration of the resolution, which will have a five-year budget window, on Wednesday and vote on the spending plan on Thursday.

Conrad said he did his best to preserve funding for President Obama's priorities, despite CBO's recent analysis of Obama's budget that show his policies would swell the deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the White House estimated.

Obama's key initiatives consist of reforming health care; implementing a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions while raising revenue for middle-class tax cuts and renewable energy research; and improving education.

Conrad said his resolution would cut the deficit by two-thirds by the fifth year of the blueprint, equal to about 3 percent of gross domestic product.

He declined to provide details about the fiscal 2010 discretionary spending level in the resolution but indicated it would likely be less than Obama's $1.13 trillion request.

He added he "asked for significant savings from all committees of jurisdiction ... there has to be some fairness in addressing this burden."

His comments come as Vice President Joe Biden is to meet with Democrats on Tuesday and Obama on Wednesday, which Republicans painted as evidence that moderate Democrats were not supportive of Obama's agenda.

"My impression is that the administration is getting quite nervous about getting adequate Democratic support," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Monday.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg, R-N.H., was critical of using a five-year budget window. "That must be a reflection of their concern about the real numbers when you get past five years," Gregg said, adding, "basically, you are playing hide and seek with the American public with the budget and it's an attempt to avoid serious choices."

In the House, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said on Monday he plans to finish work on his resolution, which will also employ a five-year horizon, by this evening. The panel will take up the measure on Wednesday.

"We are still working on various details of it, the level of nondefense discretionary spending, for example," Spratt said.

He said Democratic leaders expect to decide on Tuesday whether to include reconciliation instructions, likely for health care or shifting federal student loans into the Education Department's direct-loan program.

Opposition from the Blue Dog Coalition and eight Senate Democrats to using reconciliation to help pass a cap-and-trade bill has made that a less-attractive option.

Congressional Democratic leaders have said they could envision a scenario where the House includes reconciliation instructions and the Senate does not to keep it as an option during conference negotiations.

Gregg said Republicans plan to offer an amendment in the Budget Committee markup that would prevent the resolution from including reconciliation if it is not in the Senate measure.

"We are going to offer an amendment that says something to the effect that if the bill does not have reconciliations instructions in the Senate, then it can't have reconciliation instructions coming back from conference because reconciliation only affects the Senate," Gregg said. "It is just a way of trying to avoid their members in the Senate ... having to vote on reconciliation."

He said they will offer a proposal to cap discretionary spending to the rate of inflation.