Budget Plan Faces Heat from Both Parties

The White House Rolls the Dice With Your Money

By Josue Cofresi

Since the announcement of its national budget proposal one month ago, the White House has been met with more dissent than approval from Congress. Among many recent arguments against President Bush's budget plan, one of the strongest has come from North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad. "We must be honest about our deficits. We must return to budget discipline and prepare for the future," he said to his fellow Democrats in a weekly radio broadcast. Noting the plan's implications of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (see article on page 2), Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee told a local NBC news team that he is "very worried." Some Republican moderates, including Chafee, have also expressed concern over the pending budget's implications for the nation's growing debt.

According to a March 4 report by the party-neutral Congressional Budget Office, it's unlikely that the current administration can reach its goal of halving last year's $412 billion deficit by the year 2009. Under the proposed White House budget, the CBO estimates the shortfall at $246 billion. This figure, however, does not even include the significant costs of Bush's Social Security reform plans and continuing fight against terrorism.

Last Wednesday, pressured to dig the US government out of its economic hole, the Senate announced its own budget plan, proposing $70.2 billion in tax cuts by 2009 as opposed to the administration's planned $100 billion. For the most part, the extended taxes will be those limiting capital profit and those paid on shares. Despite these reductions, some Republican moderates still don't seem satisfied with the nature of some of the cuts, which include some in agriculture subsidies, entitlement programs, and education programs. Olympia J. Snowe, Maine Republican Senator and a noteworthy Finance Committee member, told the New York Times, "Suffice it to say, I do have serious concerns with the fundamental priorities that are being constructed in the budget. It's exacting a high price from some of the programs that are critically important to the future."

Give us back our lunch money.we need it for drugs

True to Snowe's statement, the White House's proposed budget would leave secondary education programs deprived of about $733 million in funds. Current college students who rely on the Federal Perkins Loan would also suffer. Approximately 40 years old, President Dwight Eisenhower's Federal Perkins Loan was the first initiative by the government geared specifically toward aid for college education. Approximately 600,000 students currently make use of them. Under Bush's budget plan, the program would be eradicated completely. Though the White House argues that an annual increase in Pell grants over the next five years would help needier students, changes in eligibility requirements have already led to the disqualification of about 80,000 students who once relied on Pell grants.

Debate has raged in Congress this week over the application of "pay as you go" rules, which aim to reduce the deficit by requiring that tax cuts and spending increases be offset by tax increases and spending cuts. Among Republicans, the conflict highlights a growing ideological divide between traditional conservatives who prize fiscal restraint and neoconservatives who prioritize political goals. While the current administration endorses use of the rules for spending purposes only, a number of Democrats and moderate Republicans would prefer more widespread use.

In another instance of opposition, concern over the government deficit has led 45 of 95 of House Republican Study Committee (the committee which passes budget legislation) members to push for a policy that would disallow spending outside of the proposed budget framework unless it receives three-fifths approval. The members currently have enough support to threaten the budget's passage.

Josue Cofresi B'07 is a stop-gap measure.

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