Senate budget chair says talks will go into next week

Prior to a meeting of a House-Senate conference committee on the fiscal 2002 budget resolution yesterday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said, "We've concluded that it's almost an impossibility [that] we could finish this week."

Earlier, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., conceded as much, telling reporters that while House leaders are hoping to see the conference wrapped up by week's end, "sometimes hope and reality are two different things."

House leaders left their weekly Republican Conference meeting still toeing the hard line on the budget. Hitting hard on the spending side, Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he finds it "amazing" that "it doesn't seem that some people are ever satisfied with the level of government spending."

Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, declared that the House, which essentially passed the President's budget as its own last month, does "not intend to just sit here."

Yet House leaders, who have watched as the evenly divided Senate compromised on Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut and FY02 spending figure of $660.6 billion, also signaled they understand that more compromises lie ahead.

Hastert held out hope that Congress can eventually pass tax cuts that total $1.6 trillion, even if the amount the Senate can consider under reconciliation is lower. But the speaker acknowledged, "We've got to listen and go through that process [of a conference with the Senate] and find out what numbers we can pass together, the House and the Senate."

Some members of the Republican Study Committee, formerly known as the Conservative Action Team, today said GOP leaders would have a tough time selling a budget resolution that included less than $1.6 trillion or more than a 4 percent increase in discretionary spending.

Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said he stands by the House-passed budget resolution, contending there will "have to be some convincing [for a budget] that spends more and doesn't give as much relief."

Chabot declined to say whether he would vote against a conference agreement that included a tax cut, but said, "I'm very determined that we fight for as large [a tax cut] as possible and that we keep that spending down."

Rep. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who has pushed for a more than $2 trillion tax cut, said he was optimistic about tax relief, but said he might oppose even a 6 percent increase in discretionary spending. "I think it would be a real problem for conservatives if we don't get our number [on spending]," he said.

Leaving their own weekly Democratic Caucus session, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, Caucus Chairman Martin Frost of Texas and Budget ranking member John Spratt of South Carolina made it clear that Republicans should not count on picking up many Democratic votes on the eventual budget conference report.

Asked whether he was concerned that conservative Democrats might want to vote for the budget conference report as a way to indicate their support for tax cuts, Frost responded, "Our most conservative members continue to be concerned about paying down the debt," an issue that Frost said Republicans are "walking away from" in their budget.

Frost also noted the "great Democratic unity" on the motion to instruct conferees Spratt offered Tuesday; only two Democrats - Reps. Gary Condit of California and Ralph Hall of Texas - voted with Republicans to defeat the motion, 207-200.

Gephardt predicted that conferencing the budget "is going to be a very painful exercise on their side."

He said that as Senate Republicans come up from their tax cut number of $1.2 trillion over 10 years closer to the House's $1.6 trillion figure, the more they will have to cut from the bipartisan spending increases the Senate approved for priorities such as education, Medicare prescription drug coverage and environmental protection.

"The larger the tax cut, the tougher the cuts in programs people really care about," Gephardt said.