April 10, 1997

No doubt in an attempt to turn attention away from the failures and faux pas of the Clinton Administration, some members of the President's party have reached for one of their preferred weapons of distraction: demagoguery. This time, the charge is delay on producing a budget.

Yet, demagogues overlook three important points.

• In the last 20 years, the other party has never met the April 15 deadline for reporting a budget -- except for 1994 when their offering was a budget-buster.
• The President himself asked Congress to use his budget. As Budget Committee Chairman Domenici has pointed out, the White House asked for Congress's cooperation in working with them on a budget agreement before putting out a plan of our own.
• With his $4 billion request for yet more spending, the President has not closed out the current year's budget or come up with savings to keep this extra spending from adding to the deficit.

The April 15 Budget Deadline: Never Been Met Without Busting the Budget

The Senate Budget Committee points out the April 15 deadline for Congress to pass a budget has been met only one time in its 22-year history: 1993. Not only was that budget not balanced, but it contained the largest tax hike in history. That budget for fiscal years 1994-98 had cumulative deficits of $1.1 trillion over five years, left a deficit of $202 billion in its final year, and had $274 billion in new taxes with a net tax hike of $240 billion -- history's largest.

If a $202 billion deficit were acceptable, Congress would not need to pass a budget resolution at all this year because CBO has already projected a lower deficit than that for five years from now -- $188 billion for 2002. The fact is that it is easy to pass a budget that spends hundreds of billions more money than you have and raises hundreds of billions more in taxes.

Clinton Wants His Budget Used: But First You Have to Make it Balance

In the spirit of cooperation, Congress has complied with the President's request to seriously consider his budget:

• Congress and the White House have been talking since January; congressional and Administration staff worked together during Congress's Easter break; and congressional and Administration budget leaders will work together for the next two weeks. All these efforts are intended to reach the budget agreement Clinton wanted.
• The problem is that the budget Clinton finally delivered in February does not balance -- it leaves a $69 billion deficit in 2002. Before there can be a budget agreement, there has to be balance.

First Things First: Finishing This Year's Budget . . . and Paying For It

Before Congress can pass next year's budget, the White House needs to close the book on this year's. The Administration has asked for $4.1 billion in additional spending for this year. Over half this money is to pay for U.S. troops in Bosnia -- troops that Clinton promised in November 1995 would no longer be there after November 1996. But, 10 days after his reelection, President Clinton revised the departure timetable to June 1998.

This begs the question of how Congress is supposed to achieve a balanced budget resolution -- something the President and the leaders in his party profess to want -- when the President has neither sent Congress a balanced budget nor even been able to balance his current request for more spending. The President has not offered a way to make up for this $4.1 billion in extra spending. He only has proposed savings for a bare $45 million to pay for a dam and park roads.

In Addition to Budget Work, Minority Roadblocks

The task of balancing the budget is great in and of itself, but Congress is working with a partner -- the White House -- that has not balanced a federal budget in five years or is even willing to pay for the additional spending requested for this year. On top of all this, Congress must contend with a minority element whose key agenda item thus far has been to hinder work. The leader of the President's party in the Senate has made clear his unhappiness with the Senate's budget action thus far. However, the Senate is as serious with its budget deadlines as it has ever been, and -- from all appearances -- far more serious about eliminating the deficit than either the President or his party has been. To make matters more difficult, the Senate has had to fight the efforts of the President's party whose own agenda seems to be keeping the deficit in place and the Senate from operating.

We wonder how long the public will tolerate the other party's employment of "do nothing" charges, while its leaders work to block action on anything but their separate agenda.