Putting Teeth Back in Gramm-Rudman Stalls Debt Limit Action : GOP Presses House to Act on Deficit Law

Senate Republican leaders pressed the Democratic-controlled House on Friday night to put teeth back into the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law.

Negotiations, proceeding as lawmakers prepared to head out of town for a three-week recess, held up final passage of vital legislation that would expand federal borrowing authority enough to keep the government operating through late next month.

Without the additional authority, the government would be unable to borrow the cash it needs to pay its bills after early September.

Rider Used as Threat

Supporters of the Gramm-Rudman law threatened to add to the borrowing bill a rider that would give President Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget the authority to order governmentwide spending cuts, if necessary, to meet the law’s annual deficit targets.

The original Gramm-Rudman law gave that authority to the General Accounting Office. But that provision was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the GAO is an arm of Congress and may not assume duties of the executive branch of government.

Gramm-Rudman II, as the rider to the borrowing bill is known, would return authority over the spending cuts to the executive branch.

It became clear that the Gramm-Rudman law’s supporters had the votes necessary to add the rider when a move to set it aside failed, 62 to 29.

Two Alternatives

The Senate then delayed a vote on whether to actually add the provision to the borrowing bill. During the delay, its leaders pressed House Democrats to agree to one of two alternatives:

--To promise a House floor vote in September on Gramm-Rudman II.

--To promise a House floor vote in September on a package of governmentwide spending reductions that would bring the deficit for fiscal 1987, which begins on Oct. 1, to the Gramm-Rudman target of $144 billion.

The Gramm-Rudman law requires automatic spending cuts, half from defense and half from domestic programs, whenever the projected deficit for the coming year fails to meet the annual targets spelled out by the law. Without the provision for automatic cuts, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, cuts could be made only if they were approved by Congress and signed by the President.

$73.3-Billion Increase

The borrowing bill, which has become the vehicle for the latest Gramm-Rudman dispute, would boost the federal debt limit, now just over $2 trillion, by $73.3 billion.

Both the House and Senate have approved bills providing larger debt increases, but the Senate version was loaded down with dozens of amendments, most of which are of local interest to individual senators.

When the two houses realized they could not resolve the differences between those bills before the three-week recess scheduled to begin today, they resorted to the smaller increase.