Balancing Act Could Get Messy

While House and Senate budget chairmen are endorsing President Clinton's call to balance the budget in fiscal 1999, key congressional aides today warned the impending debate could result in an election year bloodbath.

"I think it will be a mess," a House Republican aide said. "I don't think there's any consensus out there."

Clinton Monday announced that the OMB estimates the FY98 deficit at just $22 billion and said he would submit a balanced budget to Congress three years earlier than called for in the budget deal he negotiated with Congress.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., endorsed the idea. "I stated last fall we should balance the budget next year if the deficit is at a level that is low enough to reach balance," Kasich said in a statement. "We now know that goal is within reach. Accordingly, the Budget Committee intends to produce a balanced budget." Domenici said he was pleased with Clinton's comments, adding, "We are prepared to work with him in the spirit of bipartisanship to make this happen for the American people."

The chairmen said the budget will only be balanced if federal spending is constrained, but others said efforts to increase spending will loom large in any debate. Reacting to the President's comments, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, continued their push for a tax cut.

The House Republican aide said there is widespread disagreement over how to proceed, adding that reopening the balanced budget agreement will result in ideological battles all over Capitol Hill. In addition to the tax cut fight, the aide said some Republicans want to pay down the debt, while House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., is fighting for more money for highway programs, which will be reauthorized this year. "I don't know if Shuster can be held off when he's telling people that the quickest way to get re-elected is to pave the streets," the GOP aide said.

However, a Democratic source said if the budget deal is reopened for a GOP tax cut, Democrats will want to discuss increasing discretionary spending caps, which tighten in future years, for their priorities.

Meanwhile, House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., said the small deficit had more to do with the 1993 Democratic budget plan than it had to do with the balanced budget deal. "The lesson in this economic news is that the budget deficit goes away when the economy is strong," Obey said in an interview.

Obey said Clinton's plan to submit a balanced budget has one positive aspect: "The president's suggestion imposes some fiscal discipline on some of the loose talk that's been going on around here."