Lawmakers Hesitant to Endorse Deficit-Reduction Plan

A bipartisan majority of San Fernando Valley-area lawmakers recoiled Monday from the sweeping deficit-reduction package hammered out by President Bush and congressional leaders, with only Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) embracing it.

“There’s plenty of things in there for everyone to dislike,” said Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), who expressed particular concern about the impact on the elderly. “As a conservative, I’m not likely to vote for this thing.”

The negative initial reaction of the other area legislators spanned the political spectrum from Moorhead and fellow Republican Elton Gallegly of Simi Valley to liberals Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

While leaders of both parties said Monday that a majority of their members are ready to vote for the package, the reluctance among Valley lawmakers reflects the difficult task ahead for the leadership and the White House in selling it.

One of those involved in the sales process is Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who heads the House Republican Conference. The veteran lawmaker stopped short of endorsing the package of tax increases and spending cuts and called it “much stronger than I had hoped.”

“I am doing everything I can to support my President on this,” said Lewis, whose 35th District includes part of Palmdale. “This is the first time in the more than a decade I’ve been here that an adjustment downward on the continuing growth of entitlements has taken place. I don’t want to wait another decade.”

Lewis said failure to reach an agreement would mean economic and political disaster. He suggested this should outweigh the pain that would be inflicted by the blueprint to trim the budget by $40 billion this fiscal year and by $500 billion over the next five years.

The package would increase taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages; raise Medicare premiums; impose a new tax on expensive cars, boats, furs and jewelry, and reduce itemized deductions for taxpayers with incomes above $100,000.

It would also require 33 million Medicare recipients to pay more for health coverage; impose new Medicare cost-cutting requirements on physicians and hospitals; limit farm subsidies and hold spending for non-military programs to the rate of inflation.

The alternative to an agreement was deep automatic spending cuts that would have taken effect Monday, the first day of the new fiscal year, under the Gramm-Rudman law. This process, known as sequestration, would have led to widespread layoffs and sharp cutbacks in services.

Rep. William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield), who represents much of the Antelope Valley, took the unusual step Monday of publicly inviting his constituents to advise him on the proposal while he studies it.

In a news release, Thomas said he “would like to know whether they believe this tax-increase plan is superior to sequestration, which would result in across-the-board cuts in the federal budget leading to a 41% cut in all military programs and a more than one-third reduction in all domestic programs.”

Even those legislators who expressed reservations about the specifics of the 11th-hour proposal renewed their general support for cutting the massive federal budget deficit.

Overall, the Republicans challenged the excise and sales tax increases and defense spending cuts totaling about $180 billion over five years. The Democrats, in contrast, said they favor deeper defense cuts and shifting more of the tax burden to the wealthy through higher income rates for the top bracket. Partisans in both parties expressed concern about the size of the proposed Medicare reductions.

“This agreement will just allow Congress to keep raising taxes and increasing spending,” Gallegly said in a news release hours after the details were released on Sunday. “That’s not what my constituents sent me to Washington to vote for.”

He expressed skepticism that the non-defense spending cuts would actually occur and predicted that the new sales tax on luxury items, once adopted, would eventually be broadened.

Waxman, a leading advocate of expanded health care as chairman of the House subcommittee on health and environment, also expressed immediate opposition to the plan. He predicted that the $60 billion in Medicare cuts over five years would result in hospital closings and physicians refusing to treat elderly patients or cutting corners on care because of the lower reimbursement rates.

“We’re asking the elderly to take the brunt of the deficit reductions even though they didn’t cause the deficit,” Waxman said.

Berman, meanwhile, has voiced reservations but has not made up his mind. “He’s interested in real deficit reduction, but there are a number of provisions in this package about which he has serious concerns,” said Administrative Assistant Gene Smith.

Beilenson, who has long advocated a combination of tax increases and spending constraints to eliminate the deficit, called the agreement “a pretty good package considering how excruciatingly difficult the politics of putting together this kind of agreement are.”

Despite his concerns about the Medicare cut, he maintained the plan “is fair. It is real. It will help the economy over the long run. And I am still convinced we still will do the two things in the next few years that were not done: cut defense more and raise the rates on the income tax for very high-income people.”

Each of the lawmakers said his office had received a small number of telephone calls from constituents criticizing the plan. The callers generally expressed opposition to the Medicare proposals or to those provisions that would directly affect themselves.

“One gentleman was outraged, because he doesn’t think a $30,000 car is a luxury automobile,” said one House aide, who requested anonymity.