Panels' budget resolutions heading to floor

The Senate Budget Committee on Thursday approved its fiscal 2010 budget resolution, sending it to the floor on a party-line vote, a likely harbinger when it is considered next week.

Democrats spent the better part of two days fending off Republican attempts to trim spending before passing the measure, 13-10.

The House Budget Committee late Wednesday night passed its budget resolution 24-15 after a marathon session. The full House will also consider the resolution next week.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said on Thursday the Senate will start debate at 11 a.m. Monday with a final vote late Thursday or on Friday.

Among the most contentious amendments, the Senate panel shot down a proposal from Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee that would require the Senate to find 60 votes to pass a budget resolution that made the total public debt amount to 90 percent or more of gross domestic product in any given year. The amendment failed, 13-10.

"In [the] Senate resolution in each of the five years, our total debt would exceed 90 percent of GDP," said Alexander, the highest since WWII. "The president's budget goes up to 120 percent by the end of the 10th year."

He added, "This level of debt basically disqualifies us from membership in the European Union, should we ever want it. We used to make fun of France and Europe and say, 'if we are not careful one day we would be like them.' We can't be like them now because their standards are higher than ours."

The amendment was supported by Budget ranking member Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who later offered an amendment to require 60 votes to pass the budget resolution if it would call for a debt level of 60 percent of GDP and a deficit that is 3 percent of GDP -- the same levels required to join the European Union. The amendment failed, 13-10.

Conrad said such 60-vote hurdles would hinder attempts to limit spending in the appropriations process. The budget resolution sets limits for the annual spending, and members must get 60 votes to waive the budget.

"Everybody who's been around here knows how difficult it is to put a budget resolution together," Conrad said. "If we had to get 60 votes for a budget resolution, then we wouldn't have a budget resolution. I think that would be a very bad thing for budget discipline because we would lose all of the disciplining mechanisms; all of the 60-vote hurdles that are in a budget resolution. It would all be lost for the purpose of dealing with the appropriations process. So I think the result would be the reverse of what you would hope for and what I believe very strongly is needed around here, discipline."

The panel also defeated, 13-10, an amendment by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would require 60 votes to pass a budget resolution if it would result in $80,000 per household in debt service liability.

It is "an institutional device [designed] to make us do better at getting our fiscal house in order," Graham said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, offered an amendment that would require 60 votes to pass the budget if it would double the debt. Republicans have stressed that the debt under President Obama's budget would double in five years and triple in 10. The amendment failed 13-10.

A frustrated Conrad said to Republicans, "I don't understand these amendments. ... We have had a series of them now from your side, and they don't accomplish what you want to do and what I want to do," he said. "If we are precluding a budget resolution, we are precluding the very thing that can help us discipline the appropriations process."

Conrad said he believes that "The only way we are going to do something meaningful about the debt is to do something about the underlying policy."

The panel also defeated two Gregg amendments on 13-10 votes. One would have required that pay/go apply to healthcare reform legislation. The budget resolution offers a pay/go exemption in the early years, at the request of the Senate Finance Committee, but not for later years when savings are expected, according to Conrad.

The other Gregg amendment would have placed spending caps on fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2012. Appropriators typically dislike out-year spending caps because, since they don't know what the future holds, they contend that the caps tie their hands.