After Late Lobbying, Budget Advances In House Leaders Battle Bipartisan Attempt To Add $12 Billion For Roads, Bridges

After weighing last-minute criticisms and attempts to shift priorities, the House moved early today toward approving a five-year bipartisan plan to cut taxes and balance the federal budget.

“It isn’t brilliant. It isn’t perfect, but it is a huge step forward,” said House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. “It will rebuild faith in this country in these institutions.”

Gingrich predicted the plan, put together after negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders, would lead to a balanced budget in 2002, the first since 1969.

Gingrich and the White House were forced late Tuesday night to mount a vigorous lobbying effort against a surprisingly strong bipartisan attempt to add $12 billion to the five-year budget’s $125 billion for road and bridge work.

Backed by 49 governors and scores of mayors who all want more federal money for road repairs, Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said the extra money was critical to keep people safe on U.S. roads and to keep the United States competitive with countries such as Japan that are investing more money in their infrastructures.

Shuster and Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., the committee’s top Democrat, proposed financing the extra highway money by cutting defense and domestic spending and scaling back proposed tax cuts.

White House budget director Franklin Raines said that would threaten the carefully crafted budget deal.

Shuster countered that “it insults the intelligence of our members to say that this modest proposal could hurt the deal.”

The challenges from Shuster and others stretched the House debate past midnight and into the early morning hours today.

The Senate also began debate Tuesday, but was not expected to pass the plan until later in the week, before Congress breaks Friday for the Memorial Day recess.

If the budget resolution passes both the House and Senate, Congress would then begin work on bills to spell out tax cuts and spending changes assumed by the budget plan.

Earlier Tuesday, the budget plan came under attack from Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, leader of the House Democrats and a possible challenger to Vice President Al Gore for the party’s presidential nomination in 2000.

Gephardt said that the budget agreement would hurt the poor, help the rich, and in the end, fail to balance the budget.

Although the budget plan only outlines a broad target of $135 billion in tax cuts, Gephardt said the specific tax cuts worked out later will inevitably benefit the rich.

In their agreement leading to the budget vote, President Clinton and Republican congressional leaders said the eventual tax cuts would include $35 billion for college tax breaks, and leave it to later legislation to mete out the remaining $100 billion among a $500-per-child credit, a cut in the capital gains tax rate, and a cut in the estate tax.

Other highlights of the budget:

Total government spending would increase by an average of 3.1 percent a year over the next five years, down from the 4.4 percent annual increase projected under current law but more than the expected inflation rate of 2.2 percent;

Total tax collections would rise 4 percent a year, down from the projected growth of 4.2 percent a year;

Medicare spending would increase 6 percent a year, instead of 8.6 percent;

Medicaid spending would increase 6.9 percent a year, instead of 7.8 percent;

Defense spending would increase 0.4 percent a year, instead of 2.4 percent.

The budget would also add in enough money to provide health insurance coverage for as many as five million chidren, restore Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid benefits to legal immigrants, and provide some funds to help welfare recipients move into the workplace.

It is the fifth time in the last two decades that Congress and the president have proclaimed an agreement to balance the budget. None worked.