Panel Votes to Cut President’s Economic Aides

In what White House officials fear is a Republican attack on Clinton Administration economic policies, a House panel voted Tuesday to eliminate the small but highly visible office that provides economic advice to the President.

The House Appropriations Committee fought off a bid by Democrats to save the Council of Economic Advisers, and is expected to give final approval today to a spending measure that eliminates the council’s proposed $3.4-million budget for next year.

The plan to kill the council is strongly opposed by the Administration, but is expected to be approved by the full House. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain.

Republican leaders say the decision to eliminate the council’s funding is not a partisan attack on Clinton or his economic team. Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the council’s budget, argues that it merely duplicates work done elsewhere in the government, a luxury that can no longer be afforded in a time of fiscal austerity and deficit reduction.

“It is absolutely not a partisan issue,” said an aide to Lightfoot. “It’s the Democrats who are trying to say this is partisan.”

Republicans also deny speculation that the attack on the council--a move that caught the Administration off guard--represents a protest against former council chief Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who occasionally clashed with GOP lawmakers. Tyson now chairs the National Economic Council, the White House office that broadly coordinates economic policy within the Administration.

“This is not about Laura Tyson,” said the Lightfoot aide. “If we were going after her, we would have gone after the NEC’s budget.”

Administration officials argue that the council provides something rare in government--unvarnished and objective analysis and advice to the President on economic issues.