House Panel OKs 2006 Spending Plan

The House Budget Committee passed and sent to the House floor Wednesday night a $2.57-trillion budget for fiscal year 2006 that would cut domestic programs slightly more than President Bush had proposed but left room for increased defense spending and tax cuts.

The committee’s Republicans defeated a Democratic amendment to require that legislation to increase spending or cut taxes include provisions to neutralize the effect on the deficit. Republicans also shot down a series of Democratic amendments to restore spending on such domestic programs as the environment, education, veterans benefits and Medicaid -- and to pay for the additional spending by increasing taxes on foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies.

The vote on the budget was a party-line 22 to 15, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed.

Meanwhile, the Senate Budget Committee started work on its version of the budget, which would cut domestic spending somewhat less than Bush’s proposal. As on the House side, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee prepared a host of amendments reversing some of Bush’s cuts, and the committee planned to vote on the amendments today.

Congressional leaders hope to bring the respective budgets to the House and Senate floors next week and to work out a compromise between the two versions soon after the two-week spring recess ends in early April.

Both versions of the budget would implement a procedure designed to cut growth in programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, that entitle people to federal benefits if they meet certain qualifications, such as age. The special procedure, known as reconciliation, was last used in 1997.

Reconciliation requires that the budget passed by the House Budget Committee instruct nine other House committees to cut these so-called mandatory programs by a total of $7.8 billion in 2006.

In the Senate, the budget proposed by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the Senate Budget Committee chairman, would order seven Senate committees to come up with $4 billion in spending cuts.

The House budget would allow a 2006 deficit of $376 billion, compared with the $390 billion that Bush had proposed. Gregg’s version of the budget includes a $362-billion deficit.

As cleared by the House Budget Committee, the congressional budget would:

* Do nothing to force the reductions in farm subsidies proposed by Bush.

* Cut programs in the broad category of education, training, employment and social services by $5 billion more than Bush asked, leaving a total of $91 billion.

* Make room for $476 billion for defense expenditures, $29 billion more than the Bush budget included. But the House budget lists about $30 billion in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from a special spending bill that the administration proposed after submitting its budget to Congress early last month.

Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the House bill aimed to guarantee U.S. military strength and economic growth and restrain spending. “Our economy is in for sustained expansion as long as the government doesn’t get in the way,” he said.

Nussle said the spending cuts included in the budget were from projected levels, not from 2005 spending.

“I don’t view these as cuts,” he said. “These programs will all continue to grow.”

Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas), a Budget Committee member, called the proposal “fiscally irresponsible.... It does not pass the American family values test.”

Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the Budget Committee’s ranking Democrat, said the House budget, like Bush’s, vastly understated the likely deficits of coming years, mostly by omitting the effect of war costs and tax cut proposals.

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) proposed reinstituting the pay-as-you-go requirements that, from 1990 to 2002, forced House members to include offsetting spending cuts or tax increases when they proposed measures that would otherwise increase the deficit.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said the pay-as-you-go approach would constrain only new spending, not the growth of benefit programs that are growing with eligible populations and the cost of services -- particularly healthcare.