Reacting to GOP, Clinton Plans Budget to End Deficit in 10 Years

In a new sign of the powerful political momentum for a balanced budget, President Clinton plans this summer to offer a “counterbudget” to the Republican spending plan aimed at eliminating the deficit within 10 years.

Administration aides had insisted earlier this month that the timing of balancing the budget was far less important than how it was balanced. But in the face of Republican taunts that he is not committed to a balanced budget, Clinton insisted that he was more dedicated than the GOP to that goal and would offer a specific proposal soon.

In an interview with radio reporters from New Hampshire on Friday, Clinton said that his budget would reorder the GOP priorities by greatly reducing their planned tax cuts, restoring spending for education and training, and insisting that cuts in the Medicare program come only as part of a broader reform of the health care system.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, successfully defended their proposed Medicare and Medicaid cuts against an effort by Democrats to restore $100 billion to the programs over the next seven years. Democrats characterized their amendment as only the opening salvo in what would be a long battle over spending priorities that could rage well into the fall.

The House already has approved a resolution aimed at balancing the budget in seven years, and the budget being debated on the Senate floor has the same goal.

Clinton previously had emphasized the danger of setting an arbitrary deadline for eliminating the deficit. In his radio interview in New Hampshire, he said that he believes the shortfall could be eliminated by 2002, as the Republicans propose.

“The question is, what is the penalty, and what are the trade-offs?” Clinton asked. “I think clearly it can be done in 10 years. I think we can get there by a date certain.”

He said that when the Republicans prepare legislation this summer to implement the spending cuts in the congressional budget resolution, he will fulfill a promise that “I would negotiate with them in good faith, and I would propose a counterbudget.”

In Senate debate Monday, dispirited Democrats called on advocates for seniors, children and other interest groups to vigorously protest the far-reaching spending cuts in the GOP plan. That plea amounted to a Democratic concession that there had been little public outrage over the Republican budget proposals so far.

The vote defeating the Democrats’ amendment to shave back some of the Medicare and Medicaid cuts was 52 to 46. Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) voted with the Republicans; Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) voted with the Democrats. Two Republicans, Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina and Phil Gramm of Texas, were absent.

Senate Democrats have tried to link the Republicans’ proposed Medicare cuts with the GOP plan eventually to enact a tax cut of at least $170 billion. The Democratic amendment would have applied $100 billion of that sum to cushion the Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

But Senate Republicans, led by Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, argued passionately that funding reductions for Medicare are in the long-term interest of all Americans.

“We are on every single American’s side,” Domenici said, answering repeated Democratic demands during the floor debate to know “whose side are you on?”

Domenici said that the $256-billion cut from projected growth in Medicare that the Budget Committee proposed for the next seven years would avert the insolvency in 2002 of the giant federal health program for the elderly and the disabled. “A solid, solvent” Medicare program, he said, is the “cornerstone of our budget process.”

The House version of the seven-year budget, which was approved by the full House last week, would take an even bigger $282-billion bite out of Medicare’s projected growth. It would also permit a $350-billion tax cut.

The Senate plan would delay a tax cut until an actual budget is enacted. It envisions $960 billion in deficit reduction over seven years, in large part by reducing the projected annual increase in Medicare’s growth from 10% to 7%.