Budget Talks to Continue

President Clinton and congressional budget leaders emerged from an hour-long meeting at the White House Wednesday agreeing to proceed with a series of negotiations to balance the budget, while acknowledging the serious differences that divide them.

Clinton, who departed Wednesday night to Finland for a two-day summit meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said, "My first order of business when I get back from Helsinki must be to finish the job of balancing the budget. We have to do it this year."

But he put the onus on the bipartisan leadership of the Budget panels, Senate Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., House Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, Senate Budget ranking member Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and House Budget ranking member John Spratt, D-S.C., to meet over the next couple of weeks while Congress is in recess and begin clearing a path for a bipartisan resolution.

Domenici and Kasich said their discussion with Clinton and his budget team was very frank, and did not dance around the fact that Republicans are unhappy with the White House's proposed budget plan.

"They understand our pain and we understand theirs," Kasich said.

Domenici said it is "clear there are big differences", the main one being Clinton's budget proposal falling $70 billion "in the red" according to CBO estimates.

"There'll have to be some big changes," Domenici said, although he indicated the president's proposal is still a serious subject for negotiations. "The president asked us if we would ... use it as a basis for a starting point. We have not given up on that approach."

But no one provided details of the Wednesday discussion, such as whether the talks broached the idea of moving ahead with a balanced budget resolution while putting off tax cuts. Spratt offered that he personally would rather "leave out" the tax cuts.

The president asked the budget leaders and their staffs to work with White House officials during the two-week recess, which begins this weekend, to try to narrow the major differences in areas he identified as "Medicare and Medicaid, other entitlements, national defense, domestic spending, revenues and other issues relevant to the budget."

The aim, Clinton said, is "so that when I meet with the bipartisan leadership after Congress' Easter recess, we will be ready to make rapid progress until we reach a balanced budget agreement." He added: "We agree on that goal; we have agreed on a schedule to start discussions. Now comes the hard work of writing the agreement, dollar by dollar, program by program, issue by issue."

No timetable was set for the discussions that are to take place over the recess, but they are not expected to be begin until Kasich, who is getting married Saturday, returns from his honeymoon next week.

Though most of the reaction from key GOP budget members following the White House meeting focused more on the differences in the budget approach between the two parties, Domenici and Kasich offered some optimism. "I'm very hopeful that it will be a bipartisan budget resolution," Domenici said.