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Bush, Hill Democrats spar on new budget numbers |
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By Kevin Bogardus
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Posted: 07/12/07 07:41 PM [ET] |
President Bush yesterday touted his tax cuts and threatened again to use his veto pen on appropriations bills if Democrats on Capitol Hill fail to toe his line on spending.
In a speech detailing the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) mid-session review of the fiscal 2008 budget, Bush talked tough about his $933 billion limit on discretionary spending.
“Tax-and-spend policies are policies of the past, and I’m going to use my veto to keep it that way,” Bush said.
Congress’s current budget plan is $22 billion over the president’s spending cap. The Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committees rebuffed Bush’s threats, stating he has “no credibility” on fiscal matters.
“The record surplus he inherited has been wiped out and debt has exploded on his watch,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in a statement.
OMB Director Rob Portman held fast to the president’s veto threats but expressed optimism that compromise can be reached with Congress.
“Can we resolve our differences? Yes,” Portman said. “We have some flexibility and room to grow,” he added, under the spending cap. The director said he spoke with Conrad yesterday and plans to work with Congress.
There is support on the House side for the White House’s desired spending level, though. In June, 147 House Republicans signed a letter to the president supporting his proposed vetoes.
Top Republicans praised the administration’s new deficit prediction for this year ¬— reduced to $205 billion from $244 billion.
The lower projected deficit “confirms our strong economy — fueled by Republican tax cuts and pro-growth policies — is helping to balance the budget without raising taxes,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.
But Conrad said Bush was playing games with his predictions by “inflating his February deficit estimate so that he could claim an improvement now and later in the year.”
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the Senate Budget Committee’s ranking member, also pointed to OMB’s projection that tax receipts will increase 6.9 percent this year, totaling $2.6 trillion.
A liberal think tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the increased revenue estimates are not surprising.
“History shows they are the norm, not the exception. Such increases occurred in the 1980s following tax cuts, and in the 1990s following tax increases,” the group’s director of federal fiscal policy, James Horney, said.
OMB Tuesday released a new earmarks database that will be updated as new bills are passed. Portman believes the transparency effort is having “a chilling effect” and will stop some of the more unusual appropriations requests from reaching the president’s desk.
Both Bush and Portman lamented that Congress may not pass one appropriations bill before the August recess and that no headway has been made on reforming entitlement spending, such as on Medicaid and Medicare.
Portman may not be in the White House to see the completion of this year’s budget. The former Ohio congressman announced his resignation in June and is to be replaced at OMB by Bush’s nominee, Jim Nussle, the Iowa Republican who left his House seat for an unsuccessful run for governor in 2006.
Nussle, however, has met opposition from Senate Democrats and his confirmation is not certain. Portman defended Nussle, saying he will be a “great director.”
“I am mystified by the mischaracterizations out there,” Portman said. “It’s not the Jim Nussle who I know.”
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