Attempting to push their leaders on the issue, House Republican moderates and conservatives have developed a list of $32 billion in cuts they say can be used to offset any supplemental spending package Congress approves.
"None of these offsets are easy," an aide to a member of the Conservative Action Team said Tuesday in discussing the list prepared by the CATs and the Tuesday Group of GOP moderates.
The CATs' chairman, Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., and a key Tuesday Group member, Rep. Rick Lazio, R-N.Y., will present the list to GOP leaders later today; it will be given to members of the House Republican Conference Thursday. "Hopefully, it will be the official position of the conference," the aide said.
Along those lines, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, sent President Clinton a letter Tuesday chiding the president for proposing to use the budget surplus for spending programs while opposing GOP efforts to use it for a tax cut.
While details of the CATs and Tuesday Group package were not released Tuesday, it does include $7.5 billion in discretionary cuts, with the remainder coming from entitlement cuts.
"No one is saying this list is what is being enacted," the aide said, adding members can choose which cuts to approve to offset the supplemental spending.
"In some form or another, each of these provisions has been voted on by the House," the aide said, adding that the groups will not seek a formal vote of the GOP Conference since House Republicans already are on record as demanding offsets for supplemental spending.
Congress is expected to consider a supplemental spending package for such items as defense programs, the year 2000 computer problem and embassy security before adjourning for the year.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has said the spending should be designated as emergency, meaning it would be outside discretionary spending caps. However, the House GOP conservatives and moderates have said they want to offset the spending.
Some skeptics remain.
"To come up with such a large spending cut reduction six weeks before an election is a formidable task," said a senior House Appropriations Committee aide. "Can they get 218 votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate? It becomes a political issue."
And discussing entitlement cuts, the aide said, "Every other committee will be waiting to see how they cut their budgets."
But in their letter to Clinton, Armey and Gingrich accused the president of "blatantly" ignoring his own position of using the surplus for Social Security.
"By calling your new spending proposals `emergency spending,' you are taking advantage of budget rules that say emergency spending does not require offsetting spending cuts," the two GOP leaders said.
They added that Republicans want to return a portion of the surplus in the form of a tax cut and urged the president to find offsets for the spending.
Administration officials have attacked Republicans for proposing to use the surplus for long-term policy changes, in the form of tax cuts.
They have said that the emergency spending rules in the Budget Act were created to allow spending on such one-time programs as the year 2000 problem without having to find the offsets.