Attempting to jumpstart a stalled process, the House and Senate Budget chairmen late Thursday discussed options for an fiscal 1999 budget plan, including a barebones proposal to ease passage of a tax cut bill.
"It was a general discussion of the lay of the land," a Senate Budget Committee spokesman said following a meeting between House Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, and Senate Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.
"There are a number of options being discussed," he said, adding that passage of a scaled down budget plan that simply would provide tax writing committees with the protection of budget reconciliation rules is "one possibility. It's an area we're looking at. ... We're looking at all possibilities."
A key source earlier Thursday said a barebones budget would simply authorize tax writers to produce a deficit-neutral tax bill, without providing many of the details under a normal budget resolution.
Such a plan would provide the Senate with protection under budget reconciliation rules, which prohibit members from filibustering a reconciliation measure.
While the two chairmen did not establish a deadline, the Senate Budget spokesman said, "Both chairmen said they would like to move sooner rather than later." The House is expected to appoint budget conferees shortly after the July 4th recess.
Kasich and Domenici have criticized each other's budget plans in recent weeks, with Domenici calling the House plan a "mockery" and Kasich saying the Domenici plan accomplishes little beyond the balanced budget deal.
However, Thursday's discussion remained friendly, the spokesman said. "You're talking about two guys who have worked together time and time again," he said.
Meanwhile, Kasich said he plans to reintroduce his old enhanced rescission plan as an alternative to the line item veto, which the Supreme Court struck down Thursday.
Under that plan, Congress would be required to vote on rescission requests from the president within 10 days of receiving them. Kasich noted that the proposal had passed the House 342-69 in a previous Congress.
He said the enhanced rescission plan would be a good alternative until the states have time to ratify a constitutional amendment to establish a line item veto.
"Frankly, we ought to move something quickly through the House and the Senate," Kasich told reporters. He said the enhanced rescission plan would be the "cleanest" way to accomplish the line item veto's goals.
Senate sponsors of the line item veto Thursday reintroduced legislation that would require each item in an appropriations bill to be enrolled separately in an effort to meet the constitutional test for a line item veto.
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