Senate OKs Controversial Plan to Balance the Budget

Ending an embarrassing episode that featured the spectacle of liberal Democrats ridiculing the GOP for expanding the deficit, the Senate on Thursday gave final congressional approval to a six-year plan for balancing the federal budget.

But the spending blueprint, passed by a vote of 53 to 46, turned out to be less a guidebook to government policy than it is a symbol of a smoldering fiscal war that continues to divide the House and the Senate, Congress and the White House and political rivals in election campaigns nationwide.

Indeed, what was viewed as a routine deal earlier this week only survived with an extraordinary push from Republican House leaders, who faced an unexpected rebellion from their own rank and file. The conflict underscored the incendiary nature of budget politics even months after the federal government was shut down by a budget dispute between Congress and the White House, sparking a public backlash.

In one of his first pronouncements as Senate majority leader, Trent Lott (R-Miss.) described the plan approved Thursday as “a reasonable agreement that will allow us to do what we need to do for our country.” The plan, known as a budget resolution, reflects a GOP strategy to highlight the party’s differences with the Clinton administration on domestic issues while sheltering Republicans from Democratic charges that they are “extremists” with an agenda outside the mainstream.

It would freeze most domestic spending next year, slow the growth of health care and welfare programs and provide a $122-billion tax cut over six years. The budget resolution provides Congress with guidelines for more detailed spending bills in the coming weeks.

But Republicans in Congress were reminded forcefully that the exercise of balancing the budget while also cutting taxes and seeking to preserve defense spending is a difficult balancing act. Critics in both parties seized on forecasts that the outline would increase the budget deficit next year, with the red ink declining in 1998 and reaching a surplus in 2002.

“What a shock it is to look at the budget proposal before us and find out that our Republican friends, instead of reducing the deficit, are increasing the deficit,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “A lot of people would find that hard to believe.”

Lott sought to limit the damage of such attacks, pointing out that the administration’s plans would yield a slightly greater increase in the deficit in 1997. “Yes, there is a spike in the next fiscal year, but so is there in the president’s proposal, and it’s $2 billion more than ours,” he said.

The budget debate also brought into focus an ongoing rift between the House, where true-believing conservatives exert greater influence, and the Senate, a more moderate body that is more inclined to compromise. Before this week’s flap, House leaders agreed to the Senate’s request to increase domestic spending by $4 billion.

That agreement, however, provoked conservative House members, who doubt the Senate’s commitment to frugality--echoing last year’s budget conflicts when Senate members also stuck to a more moderate course on spending cuts.

By many accounts, the near-term prospects for many items in the budget resolution are murky at best because Congress and the administration have different priorities in a variety of areas.

“I just think that the likelihood that Congress and the president will sit down this close to an election and make decisions based on reason and common sense is highly unlikely,” said Martha Phillips, a budget expert who directs the anti-deficit Concord Coalition.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) put it more succinctly. Barring a new spirit of bipartisan compromise, he said: “This budget is dead.”