Election-Year Budget Battle Looms
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
Associated Press
March 5, 2008
Page 2 of 2
Democrats are proposing a $3.5 billion increase for energy programs, a $5.7 billion increase for education programs and Head Start, and a $3.9 billion hike for transportation accounts.
Their overall blueprint, including entitlement programs that grow automatically, differs from the president's by just 1 percent. But Democrats want to boost domestic programs funded by Congress -- which comprise less than one-fifth of the federal budget -- by about 4 percent.
Bush's budget called for a five-year freeze on such programs, and Bush has said he would veto spending that exceeds his bottom line.
Jim Nussle, Bush's budget director, took the unusual step of reiterating those threats even before Democrats unveiled their budget plans. Bills that top Bush's ''reasonable and responsible spending levels will be met with a veto because every dime Congress spends beyond those limits will push the budget deficit higher,'' Nussle warned in letters Monday to Conrad and Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the House Budget Committee chairman.
In fact, the most important budget bills this year will involve Bush's remaining $108 billion request for current-year funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and easing the pinch of the AMT on middle class taxpayers.
The AMT was originally designed to apply only to the wealthy, but now threatens to ensnare more than 20 million additional taxpayers this year unless Congress comes to the rescue.
The plan also endorses an emergency economic stimulus plan of up to $35 billion that could include jobless benefits, food stamps and heating subsidies for the poor -- items dropped from a $168 billion package enacted last month that will send rebates of $300-$1,200 to 130 million households.
Conrad called the measure ''an insurance policy,'' adding, ''None of us yet know whether this trigger needs to be pulled.''
Bush has said he opposes such a bill and one aimed at easing the housing and foreclosure crisis, but Democrats seem to relish the prospect of election-year battles with the president and Republicans on additional proposals to boost the faltering economy.
In some years, lawmakers use the arcane congressional budget process to blueprint ease filibuster-proof passage through the Senate of tax legislation or cuts to benefit programs like Medicare. Conrad doesn't plan to do that, he said.
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