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Senators prepare for duel over budget |
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By Elana Schor
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Posted: 03/19/07 06:47 PM [ET] |
The Senate begins its budget week today amid a gloves-off partisan battle over fiscal discipline, the challenge of the tax gap and the future of the Bush tax cuts.
Despite their majority, Democrats face particular difficulty this year as an absent Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) leaves little room for defections and Republicans sharpen their rhetorical knives.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) last week won panel approval for his budget, which provides for extension of the Bush administration’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts only if they are offset in full — which Republicans consider a record-breaking tax hike in disguise.
“They want to say this is a tax increase. … We believe there doesn’t have to be a tax increase at all under our budget,” Conrad said late last week.
The Democratic budget adheres to the Congressional Budget Office revenue baseline, he noted, which presumes extension of current tax rates. Yet postponing a decision on applying pay-as-you-go rules to the tax cuts risks handing Republicans a potent campaign issue in 2008.
“It’s easy to push tough decisions down the road, but the sooner we tackle this, the better, because there is never going to be a politically ideal time for the Democrats to acknowledge that their budget paves the way for the largest tax increase in American history,” Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), senior Republican on the Joint Economic Committee and a presidential contender next year, said through a spokesman.
Conrad also effectively blocks Republicans from using reconciliation to push through tax cuts with a simple majority, as they did last year, by creating a new 60-vote point of order.
Another flashpoint for GOP budget amendments is the catastrophic rise in entitlement spending, which Conrad has discussed at four hearings so far this year but opted not to address in the budget. Instead, Conrad and Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) have settled on a bipartisan entitlements commission that will report back to Congress in September.
“Those have worked out so well in the past,” quipped one Senate Republican aide. “We know what needs to be done, and it doesn’t take yet another commission. It takes a politically difficult choice.”
Last year’s Republican budget also passed on a long-term entitlement fix but still squeaked through, 51–49, illustrating the stress of a 50-hour time clock and a freewheeling “vote-a-rama” at week’s end.
“We have a statutory way of proceeding through this,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday on the floor. “Whoever drew the statute probably had too much to drink the night before … but at least we know what we are up against.”
Both parties are readying their own budget messaging, according to leadership aides. Republicans will focus on the budget’s impact on their individual states, while Democrats plan to devote three days this week to three core priorities on which their budget significantly betters the president’s.
Democrats are slated to single out SCHIP, the children’s health insurance program that they have set aside $50 billion to reauthorize; veterans’ healthcare, which they would fund at $3.5 billion above the White House level; and the Department of Education, where funding would rise by $6.1 billion.
Much of the burden of applying pay-as-you-go to the outlines of the Democrats’ budget rests with the Finance Committee, testing the relations between Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (Iowa). Conrad contends that the bulk of the savings can be found by Finance working to close the “tax gap,” or the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid each year — a fix the former revenue commissioner has urged since his election in 1987.
But Grassley has mounted a one-man offensive to prove that raising revenue from the tax gap is easier said than done. Comparing Finance to “The Wizard of Oz” last week, Grassley asked: “… Does that mean the chairman of the Budget Committee is clicking his shoes under the table?”
Grassley also jabbed at House leadership during last week’s markup, citing the Ways and Means Committee’s resistance to tax changes suggested by the Senate to accompany the minimum wage bill.
“Democratic control does not seem to have changed the House’s allergic reaction to revenue raisers,” Grassley said, voicing skepticism that mutually agreeable offsets could be found.
Baucus is working with all Finance members to determine ideal offset strategies for SCHIP and a long-term fix for the alternative minimum tax, a committee spokeswoman said.
“The constraints of pay-go will be tough, but the Finance Committee will do its best to do its part,” the spokeswoman added.
Several Budget Republicans are eyeing a resubmission of amendments they offered unsuccessfully during the committee markup. Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-Wyo.) would impose a 60-vote threshold on any new unfunded mandates for small businesses, while Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) would increase Medicare premiums for upper-income seniors. |
