Budget Under Construction

If a budget resolution is supposed to be a blueprint, the Senate last week approved a set of plans that builds a structure unsupported by revenues, one that is unlikely to withstand the political forces of an election year. The bill is a jumble of program saves and fiscal weaknesses; it does well by adding government drug negotiation to Medicare and funding low-income energy subsidies but avoids reality by rejecting a pay-as-you-go provision. It raises the deficit while cutting environmental programs. As an overall plan, its overwhelming characteristic is its lack of direction.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, who voted for this budget, deserves credit for getting the drug negotiation passed. She has stayed focused on the shortcomings of the new Medicare drug benefit and led the support for this change even to the point of supporting a budget that contained the possibility of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an idea she has voted against numerous times in her career.

Sen. Susan Collins, who cited the ANWR drilling and the rejection of pay-go provisions in her vote against the budget, can also easily defend her position. It is that kind of budget – a mix of important funding measures such as more money for LIHEAP as well as decisions such as cuts to funding for clean-water and land conservation.

It includes, whatever their chances, more tax cuts even as spending rises, the cost of the war in Iraq is a hundred times more than expected and Congress can’t raise the debt ceiling high enough. The cuts include extensions for the provisions from the 2001 and 2003 tax bills – more than $200 billion over five years – marginal rate extensions, dividend and capital gains cuts, marriage penalty and child credit, etc. Meanwhile, the most that can be expected for the largest tax problem, the alternative minimum tax, will be a one-year fix.

Hearings and debate, plus the House version of a spending plan it can’t seem to pull together yet, may give shape to the budget bill, but there will remain doubts about the administration’s claim the deficit outlook is brightening or the congressional claim that tough choices are going to be made to bring a measure of sustainability to the process. That certainly wouldn’t mean huge cuts to entitlement programs, as some Republican House members have proposed, nor would it mean revoking all the tax cuts that have been put in place during the last five years.

But it does mean showing restraint at both ends of the budget, acknowledging the weakened condition of some important programs such as Medicare and taking steps to strengthen them. Congress is talking about giving the president the power of a line-item veto because, apparently, it can’t behave itself. But it’s hard to believe that even a line-by-line review would make this latest budget sound.