Deficit Law Sponsors Press to Restore Automatic Cuts

The original sponsors of the Gramm-Rudman law, afraid that deficit reduction will be lost in a legislative crunch this fall, announced an effort Wednesday to force Congress to act this week on a measure restoring the law’s threat of automatic spending cuts.

They plan to attach their proposal--which has been passed by the Senate but faces strong opposition in the House--to stop-gap legislation temporarily raising the federal borrowing limit. Such a move could force Congress to delay recessing as scheduled this weekend.

Feeling of Resentment

“There’s a strong feeling of resentment about what they are doing,” House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. said.

The plan would restore the automatic mechanism by giving the White House Office of Management and Budget the power to order the spending cuts, thus solving the problem that compelled the Supreme Court last month to overturn the automatic-cut provision.

The court ruled that it violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers because it allowed the comptroller general, who answers to Congress, to issue an order to the executive branch.

Can’t Settle Differences

The Senate originally attached the measure amending the law to legislation that would raise the debt ceiling by $244 billion, but it appears that the House and Senate will not be able to settle their differences on the large debt bill before adjournment.

To keep the government operating at least until Congress returns in September, the lawmakers hope to pass a short-term debt extension this week. The short-term borrowing increase awaits House action, but addition of the Gramm-Rudman revision is unlikely until it reaches the Senate.

The projected fiscal 1987 deficit seems certain to miss the Gramm-Rudman law’s target of $144 billion when the official forecast is made on Friday. The forecast is expected to project a deficit about $20 billion more than the target.

Without the automatic feature struck down by the courts, a congressional vote and a presidential signature are required to implement the cuts necessary by early October to meet the law’s target.

‘Legislative Train Wreck’

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), one of the authors for whom the law is named, suggested that he has little confidence that lawmakers would be willing to vote for cuts in an array of popular federal programs only weeks before this fall’s elections. “No action will be taken without that disciplining device,” he said, predicting “a legislative train wreck in September.”

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) agreed that passing the legislation restoring the automatic mechanism is “the best possible way to assure that we are going to control the deficit.”

But House Democratic leaders are wary of the plan, which they say could give the President too much leeway in deciding the size and shape of cuts in individual programs. They argue that they want more time to study the plan and will resist attaching it to the stop-gap legislation raising the debt ceiling enough to keep the government operating until Congress returns in September.

Panel OKs Debt Hike

The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday approved a short-term $73.3-billion increase in borrowing authority--enough, committee spokesmen said, to keep the government from going into default before late September.

However, the committee refused to add to that bill the legislation amending the original Gramm-Rudman law to restore the provision allowing automatic cuts. The debt limit bill must be passed before Congress recesses and, if it becomes tied up in a fight over the Gramm-Rudman issue, recess could be delayed.