Clinton Defends Budget Citing Cbo, Republicans Say Plan Won’t Balance The Budget

President Clinton said Saturday his 10-year plan to balance the budget gradually will avoid “unacceptable pain,” but a Republican senator insisted the president will have to make deeper cuts or face continuing deficits.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton said the new spending plan he presented last week would avoid the kinds of cuts that would hurt senior citizens, college students, veterans and the poor trying to move from welfare to jobs.

Clinton said the budget could be balanced in seven years, as Republicans have proposed. But, he added, “there’s no need to impose the pain that would cause or to run the risk of a recession.”

In the Republican response, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., said a Congressional Budget Office analysis found Clinton’s plan is based on overly optimistic economic projections and would not balance the budget in a decade.

“It looks like he will have to reduce more spending to end the red ink,” said Abraham, a member of the Senate Budget Committee.

Speaking from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where leaders of the world’s seven richest democracies are meeting, Clinton did not address the CBO study.

But his budget director, Alice Rivlin, said Friday that the administration’s economic assumptions and deficit projections are “prudent, accurate and consistent with mainstream private economists.”

Even while he criticized the degree of Clinton’s recommended cuts and acknowledged “significant differences” between the White House and congressional plans, Abraham welcomed the president’s initiative.

“It confirms that Republicans were right in saying you can balance the budget and cut taxes at the same time in order to help middle class families strengthen the economy,” Abraham said.

For his part, the president focused on contrasting his budget blueprint to Republican proposals.

“Balancing the budget is not going to be a walk in the park. … It will cause real pain. But the difference between my plan and the congressional plans is the difference between necessary cuts and unacceptable pain,” Clinton said.

He said the plan advanced by the Republican majority in the House would hurt veterans by quadrupling the amount they pay for prescriptions “while cutting taxes for a lot of upper-income Americans who really don’t need a tax cut.”

“My plan cuts federal spending by $1.1 trillion,” he said. “It does not raise taxes. It is disciplined, comprehensive and serious.”