Stretching Deficit Deadline 2 Years Backed at Summit

Congressional participants in budget summit talks voiced support Tuesday for the concept of a five-year, $500-billion deficit reduction package that would balance the budget by 1995, two years later than the deadline in the Gramm-Rudman law.

White House officials and lawmakers discussed the new approach at their third meeting since President Bush asked Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to cooperate in devising a bipartisan plan for dealing with soaring red-ink spending.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) and Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the committee’s top-ranking Republican, endorsed the concept of reaching a five-year agreement. Sasser said he believed other Democrats would agree with that approach.

“It’s something that’s do-able,” Domenici said.

But both senators said there had been no discussion of what spending cuts or tax increases might be recommended to reach such an ambitious goal.

One practical advantage of a five-year plan is that it would allow the President and Congress to agree on modest deficit reduction measures in the near future and schedule the largest and most politically painful steps for later years.

It was the first time since the summit talks began a week earlier that discussions ranged beyond the problem of reducing the deficit for the coming fiscal year--now estimated as high as $200 billion--to the $74-billion limit set by the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law for fiscal 1991, which begins Oct. 1.

“If the negotiation is to be deemed successful, it would have to be a five-year deficit-reduction package,” Sasser said after a three-hour meeting. Domenici said there is growing evidence that a deficit-cutting package between $400 billion and $500 billion is necessary to resolve the problem.

As Sasser and Domenici gave their views, the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office remained at odds over the size of future deficits. The summit participants ordered the CBO and OMB to agree to estimates within two weeks.

Rep. Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.), one of the participants, said as he left: “If they keep going the way they’re going now, hell will freeze over before they agree on any figures, let alone the deficit.”

Domenici was more optimistic, saying: “We’re not looking for any gimmicks. It’s very honest. . . . We’re moving toward agreement on a common set of good numbers.”