Budget talks reveal GOP divisions

Sunday, May 23, 2004

WASHINGTON POLITICS: Bart Jansen

When the Senate showdown came Thursday, the Republican leadership blinked instead of Maine's senators.

Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Budget Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., had postured for days to force a vote on a $2.4 trillion spending blueprint for the next year. President Bush made a rare visit to the Capitol on Thursday, where he lobbied hundreds of Republican lawmakers in a basement meeting room for his agenda.

But four Republican senators, including Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, remained steadfast with Democrats in opposition to the budget.

Snowe and Collins, along with GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, argue that tax cuts or new spending should be offset with spending cuts elsewhere. The proposal is called "pay/go" in Washington shorthand, for "pay as you go."

House leaders have argued during a six-week standoff on the budget that tax cuts shouldn't be subject to pay/go because any short-term loss to the treasury would be offset with long-term gain to the economy. House leaders muscled the budget through their chamber Wednesday on a 216-213 vote with pay/go only for spending programs outside defense and homeland security - not for tax cuts.

ONE OF THE reasons House leaders need a budget is because it allows them to avoid a separate vote in an election year to increase the country's total debt, which already stands at a record $7 trillion.

A budget could also make it easier to approve tax cuts in the Senate, allowing a simple majority rather than a 60-vote majority for adoption.

As the hours ticked by Thursday, Frist kept threatening a budget vote. The idea, as stated by leaders in numerous news stories, was to ratchet up the pressure on the moderates. Either they would approve the budget or embarrass the president of their own party by killing it.

Tensions that had been simmering for weeks boiled over.

McCain gave a speech Wednesday to the Progressive Policy Institute calling for sacrifice during time of war.

"From pork-barrel spending to expanding entitlements to tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens, both parties have proven who they are working for and it's not the American taxpayer," McCain said. "My friends, we are at war. Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice."

That provoked House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to question the senator's Republican credentials. Then he went a step further and questioned the patriotism of the decorated veteran who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam by suggesting he visit the wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan at military hospitals.

"If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda," Hastert said. "There's the sacrifice in this country."

McCain fired back with his own definition of being a Republican.

"I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility," he said. "Apparently, those days are long gone for some in our party."

Snowe and Collins kept a relatively low profile during the cross-fire. The two are routinely among the least loyal to Republican priorities, according to studies by the publication Congressional Quarterly.

THE BUDGET FIGHT is basically a continuation of the debate over the massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and Snowe voted against the second one.

At times Nickles could be seen speaking vigorously to Snowe on the Senate floor. Collins would emerge from leadership meetings to tell a swarm of reporters only that talks continued.

The compromise that Republican leaders struck without the moderates was to adopt pay/go for a single year, rather than for the budget's five-year span. The House vote locked in that strategy.

Moderates, however, argued that a year was too short to rein in a deficit projected at $521 billion this year. After the House vote, Collins issued a statement saying she would oppose the budget.

"Pay/go provides a strong protection against future deficits soaring even higher," she said. "A one-year pay/go does little to address this concern."

Ultimately, the showdown came not on the Senate floor, but in the back rooms and hallways where negotiations occurred. Frist decided against holding a vote he was destined to lose. Congress broke up for a week-long Memorial Day recess. The budget might come back up in June.

- Staff Writer Bart Jansen can be reached at 202-488-1119 or at bjansen@pressherald.com.

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