Congress Has Other Plans for Budget Surplus

Even as the presidential candidates continue to spar over what to do with the burgeoning federal budget surplus, Congress already is spending it with seeming abandon.

The Senate approved $83 billion for housing, space and environmental programs Thursday, a 7% increase over last year. That is just the latest in a parade of bills that have been passed with hefty spending hikes--in many cases even more than President Clinton wanted.

The pace of spending is so brisk that it raises questions about whether Congress will make it impossible for either Al Gore or George W. Bush--whoever wins the White House--to make good on ambitious promises based on optimistic budget surplus projections.

The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget analysis group, estimates that, if lawmakers keep spending at the rate they have since 1998, the projected surplus over the next 10 years will drop to about $700 billion--far less than the $2.2 trillion surplus Bush and Gore have assumed would be available to finance their tax-cut and spending plans.

“There is a fiscal disconnect between Washington and the campaign trail,” said Robert Bixby, Concord’s executive director. “Politicians in Washington are spending at a pace that would leave very little surplus to fight over.”

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) defended his party’s fiscal stewardship, saying that Republicans have kept spending below where it would have been if they had not insisted on using most of the surplus to pay down the national debt.

But pressures to spend are clearly bipartisan. The extra money is going to finance many of Clinton’s priorities on the domestic front, the GOP’s push for higher defense spending--and pet projects for lawmakers of both parties running for reelection.

“The much-ballyhooed, very optimistic view of our budget surplus is being eroded as we speak by this appropriations process,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The budget is dominating as Congress struggles to wrap up this legislative session. Lawmakers are anxious to return home to campaign at a time when control of the House and Senate is up for grabs.

Of the 13 appropriation bills needed to keep the government running, three have been enacted, one has been vetoed and two more are on the way to the White House.

The Interior Department funding bill that Clinton has signed exemplifies the pressures that are driving up budget costs this year. It includes $18.8 billion--a whopping 26% increase over last year’s spending and more than Clinton requested. It includes the biggest increase in history for land conservation, a Clinton priority; the first increase in seven years for the National Endowment for the Arts; and $1.6 billion in emergency funding for firefighting in the West.

Clinton also has signed a defense appropriation bill, a GOP priority, that provided $288 billion for the Pentagon in the 2001 fiscal year--up $18 billion from 2000.

More such increases are on the way. Congress is about to send Clinton bills that would increase transportation appropriations by 25%. And agriculture spending is expected to jump from $14 billion to $18 billion.

Action on the majority of appropriation bills had been stalled, but the pace began to pick up this week. On Thursday, the Senate advanced three more measures.

One was the housing appropriations bill, which would set aside $83 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Veterans Affairs Department and a variety of science and space agencies. That is up from $77 billion in 2000.

It would include spending increases to accommodate many of Clinton’s priorities. For example, it would increase funding for Clinton’s signature national service program by 22%, to $433 million.

The bill is also fattened by $292 million in local “economic development” grants, earmarked for such projects as the restoration of a carousel in Cleveland and the renovation of a theater in Hartford, Conn.

The bill, the product of negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans, includes provisions that environmentalists oppose. One would delay action by the Environmental Protection Agency on developing new drinking water standards.

Another would keep the agency from identifying areas in violation of clean air standards until after the Supreme Court settles a challenge to those standards. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) pushed to drop those riders but the Senate refused on a 64-31 vote.

In other budget action Thursday:

* The Senate approved a new version of an energy and water spending bill. It dropped a provision concerning management of the Missouri River that had prompted Clinton to veto an earlier version of the bill. The bill as now written would provide $23.6 billion in 2001--an 11% jump.

* The Senate also approved funding for the Treasury Department after acceding to Clinton’s demand to provide $215 million more for the Internal Revenue Service than the bill initially included. Also linked to the Treasury bill is a GOP priority: a repeal of the 3% tax on telephone services, which would cost $20 billion over five years. And the measure clears the way for members of Congress to receive a 2.7% pay raise.

*

Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story.