Gephardt Sees ‘Fairness Deficit’ Says Deal Favors Wealthy, Denies Posturing For Election

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., on Tuesday denounced the balanced-budget and tax-cut agreement President Clinton negotiated with congressional Republican leaders, as the House prepared to pass the measure.

Using rhetoric that recalled past budget battles between GOP White Houses and congressional Democrats, Gephardt said the agreement favored the wealthy with its tax cuts, did not spend enough on children’s health, education, roads and bridges, and was based on economic assumptions that were too optimistic.

“This budget agreement is a budget of many deficits - a deficit of principle, a deficit of fairness, a deficit of tax justice and, worst of all, a deficit of dollars,” said Gephardt, who stood alone among Hill Democratic leaders in his opposition.

“I don’t think this budget is fair.”

Gephardt’s speech did nothing to slow the efforts of Republican leaders and the White House to rush the complex, five-year balanced-budget plan through Congress before the start of a Memorial Day recess on Friday.

The House worked through the night to try to complete work on a budget resolution that embodies the outlines of the plan, while the Senate launched what was certain to be a more protracted debate.

However, Gephardt’s speech was an important step as he attempts to develop a political rationale for a possible presidential race in 2000 and offer an alternative to Clinton’s effort to govern from the political center.

Next week, the St. Louis Democrat will further highlight his differences with Clinton and Vice President Gore - Gephardt’s chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination - with a speech outlining his opposition to extension of China’s trade privileges.

Gephardt’s opposition is all the more remarkable because his top lieutenant and philosophical soulmate, House Minority Whip David E. Bonior, D-Mich., spoke out in support of the budget plan.

In his speech, Gephardt insisted that his break with the administration and the Republicans over the budget “is not politics” and is not about “some election.”

But Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, R-Texas, dismissed Gephardt’s stance as political posturing. “He has positioned himself excellently to command the liberal base of the Democratic Party in the primaries,” Armey told reporters. “I think from his point of view it is a wise decision.”

With Republicans and nearly half the Democrats committed to supporting the plan, the strongest protest came from liberal Democrats and a few conservatives concerned that the package is skewed in favor of upper-income Americans and that the proposed tax cuts would “explode” in cost over the coming decade, despite assurances from GOP leaders and the White House that the net cost would be held to $250 billion over that period.