1988 Budget Pact Seen as Talks Open
House and Senate budget writers opened talks on a final fiscal 1988 budget resolution Tuesday and predicted that they would settle differences between spending plans passed by the two chambers.
“Within the framework of a trillion-dollar budget, the similarities are much greater than the differences,” said Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Budget Committee.
The House and Senate plans are similar in calling for about $18 billion in tax increases, rejecting President Reagan’s proposed domestic spending cuts and missing the goals of the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law. The statute calls for a deficit no larger than $108 billion next year, but the budgets would leave red ink about $25 billion higher than that.
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