Budget Plan Approved Passage In Senate Reflects Strong Bipartisan Support

Congress on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a five-year plan to balance the budget for the first time in a generation, cut taxes and chart a new direction in the deficit-spending debate.

The Senate approved the budget 76-22, reflecting strong bipartisan support for the agreement reached last month by President Clinton and Republican leaders. The House set the pace earlier in the day, approving the budget plan in a decisive 327-97 vote.

The fiscal 1998 budget resolution does not require action by the president. It serves only as a blueprint for the Republican-controlled Congress to write spending and tax legislation. Final votes on those pieces will come later this summer or fall.

In the House, Texas Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Ron Paul, R-Texas, voted against the budget plan. They were joined in the Senate by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas.

The prevailing sentiment, however, was that Congress had turned the corner on dealing with the deficit.

Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, one of the plan’s architects, said:

“This is not the end of the day. But it is a very bright start.”

And Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said: “Those who are looking for total victory here will not find it. Those who are looking for total defeat here will not find it. It is a consensus view.”

The budget plan drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans. Many questioned the credibility of the plan’s spending reductions and the proposed tax cuts and said the plan would not really balance the budget.

“I am not going to drag that dead cat back across the table by pointing out again in great detail that 97 cents out of every dollar of deficit reduction in that budget is simply assumed,” Gramm said. “Deficit spending in the Senate, the deficit spending in Washington never comes to an end.”

Barton agreed, saying the plan assumes the economy will remain strong and contains overly generous spending. “It is based on wildly optimistic economic assumptions,” he said.

Supporters argue that the budget is based on conservative projections by the Congressional Budget Office that assume economic growth of 2.1 percent a year.

If fully implemented, the fiscal 1998 budget could have a wide-ranging effect on Americans and cut taxes for millions of families. It also would impose reforms in the government’s health care programs, the first of many expected to deal with the exploding costs from the retirement of baby boomers.

“This is a good beginning,” said Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas.