Even though this is not a year when a big budget deal is likely or perhaps even necessary, a few small events are taking place each week that may add up to something more significant than anyone imagined.
This week, for example, we are waiting to see whether there will be enough votes in the Senate Budget Committee to report out the compromise fiscal 2001 budget resolution ("Budget Battles," March 15, 2000) developed by Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio. With a very narrow 12-10 ratio of Republicans to Democrats on the committee, and Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and other Republican committee members threatening to vote against the resolution with the apparently united Democrats, this could be the beginning of a revolt that leaves the current budget process without enough support to be implemented.
If this happens in committee, all budget eyes will be looking at the Senate leadership, which will have to decide whether having a budget process is worth the political effort necessary to keep it. This situation has happened before-in the early days after the Congressional Budget Act went into effect in the late 1970s-when support for the new budget process in the House was in such doubt that the leadership had to step in year after year to make sure it was implemented. Had it not been for the commitment of Speaker Tip O'Neill, D-Mass., Budget Chairman Robert Giaimo, D-Conn., and especially Rules Committee Chairman Richard Bolling, D-Mo., the budget process would have never survived to the 1980s.
Beyond the obvious facts that this is a Republican-controlled Senate rather than a Democratic-controlled House, the biggest differences between then and now are that there is a surplus rather than a deficit, the budget process has already failed once and the leadership is divided.
The surplus means that a budget process may be less politically important then when there was a problem-the deficit-to be solved. The previous (and recent) failure of the budget process-when House and Senate Republicans failed to agree among themselves on a compromise fiscal 1999 budget resolution-could mean that senators may be thinking that they can survive without it. A divided leadership-Republican Deputy Majority Leader Don Nickles, R-Okla., is said to support Gramm's position-could mean that there is not enough political strength to get a budget resolution adopted this year regardless of what Trent Lott & Co. would like to do.
But Wait, There's More
All of this comes on the heels of last week's move by House Republicans to kill any chance of eliminating the federal tax on gasoline-something that would have been hard to imagine just a year or two ago.
Partly in response to the high price of oil, a proposal was floated by some Republicans to eliminate or temporarily suspend the 4.3 cents per gallon gas tax. Over the course of a few days, the plan started to gain some momentum. Then, in response to a strong statement made by another Republican-Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa.-that eliminating or suspending the gas tax would lead to dramatically lower federal spending, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, announced that the leadership had decided the tax should stay in place. And all of this occurred just as George W. Bush, who was one of the prime supporters of the gas tax suspension in the first place, went from being just a candidate to the presumed Republican presidential nominee.
In other words, not only have House Republicans now adopted policies that make them highly vulnerable to the same "tax-and-spend" label they used so effectively against Democrats during the 1990s, but they publicly repudiated and embarrassed their own presidential candidate at the same time.
And that little surprise came just a week or so after the Domenici/Kasich compromise, which did not assume a revenue reduction big enough to accommodate the tax cut that is a major part of candidate Bush's campaign.
Are these the same Republicans who through a large part of last year had to deal with rebellious members who wanted to reduce spending more so that the federal government could continue to be cut even though there was a surplus?
Are these the same Republicans who have so steadfastly advocated tax cuts over spending the past two decades?
Is this the end of the budget world as we have come to know it?
Question Of The Week
Last Week's Question. Last week readers had a straightforward question to answer: What does the current budget process say is supposed to happen if discretionary spending exceeds the existing cap and when is it supposed to happen? The responses, however, were far more fanciful than factual. Instead of the correct answers-a "sequester" occurs 15 days after Congress adjourns for the year, and cuts eligible spending by whatever percentage will bring the total down to the cap-"Budget Battles" readers came up with an incredible variety of possibilities, most of which cannot or should not be repeated in a place where their bosses might see them. The winner of an "I Won A 2000 Budget Battle" T-shirt, and one of the handful of people who got both parts of the answer right, is Natasha Moore, who works in the Washington, D.C. office of Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
This Week's Question. Here's a hint based on last week's experience: This question requires a factual rather than a creative answer to get an "I Won A 2000 Budget Battle" T-shirt of your own. The question: The budget process requires the budget resolution conference report for the coming fiscal year to be adopted by both houses before the full House can start debating appropriations for that year-unless what date is reached? Send your response to scollender@nationaljournal.com by 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 25, 2000. The winner of the T-shirt will be selected by random drawing if there is more than one correct response.
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