Foley, Bush Try to Save Faltering Budget Pact

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley held an emergency meeting with President Bush today to save the faltering bipartisan budget plan, then said he would call a vote on the plan later today or Friday.

The plan has been threatened by a congressional rebellion, with Democrats demanding the right to alter some of its provisions.

Foley (D-Wash.) appeared to soften his stance on how much leeway the tax-writing House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees will have to change the plan.

“I’m not going to start to decide how those committees will legislate,” he said. “That’s their concern and their responsibility and their right.”

Foley said it was always assumed that the two committees would write the tax legislation.

“Many of the policies outlined (in the budget agreement) were for illustrative purposes,” he said.

“We just reiterated the understanding which we’ve always had,” Foley said. But it now appears the plan may be open to changes once it reaches its second stage.

That would ensure considerable power over the plan by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.).

Both are severe critics of tax provisions that they say give corporations and the rich a $12-billion tax break and open huge new loopholes in the tax code.

That was one of the factors in the growing Democratic opposition to the five-year, $500-billion deficit reduction plan forged over the weekend.

Bush lobbied 30 Republicans at a White House breakfast, and Democratic leaders pressed their followers at a closed meeting to support the package.

The President’s usual supporters in Congress have loudly balked at the budget plan.

Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the Republican whip, has said he and other conservatives will oppose the plan because it lacks enough growth incentives--by which he means a reduction in the capital gains tax.

Meanwhile, at a separate White House news conference, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said congressional approval of the deficit reduction package would benefit the world economy.