Word: cut
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Great American Budget Battle, Washington's answer to professional wrestling, has officially begun, all roars and growls and theatrical blows to the head. This week Congress will send the President a $792 billion tax-cut bill; he has promised to stomp on it. Clinton has pushed a $300 billion spending program, including a new prescription-drug program for Medicare; congressional fists are already clenched. There is talk of grand ideological warfare, of reckless spendthrift Democrats and reckless plutocrat-loving Republicans fighting over how to divvy up the glorious $3 trillion surplus. In this season's budget politics, much...
...next 10 years, why would lawmakers be forced to gut programs like air-traffic control and food inspection and counterterrorism? Because two years ago, they promised they would. The problem is the famous 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which balanced the budget only because Congress and the President agreed to cut the total amount of discretionary spending in future years, without having to say exactly what would be cut. Congress, like Wimpy, will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today...
Well, the future is now, and the caps are giving everyone a blinding headache. If military spending merely keeps up with inflation, then every other government program will have to be cut 20% in the next two years. This would require, for instance, slicing $16 billion this year from the huge, $315 billion bill that covers health and education. Increasing Pentagon outlays, as both sides have promised to do, could require 50% cuts elsewhere. That's not going to happen. But the minute the lawmakers bust the caps, the surplus starts disappearing...
Last week House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Lott acknowledged that the tax cut was dead for 1999. Unlike some G.O.P. moderates, Lott claimed he wasn't interested in a compromise--a little more spending for Clinton, a smaller tax cut for the G.O.P. Better to have the issue to take to voters next year. That suits most Democrats fine: Al Gore never misses a chance to denounce the G.O.P.'s "risky tax-cut scheme" and to promise that education and health care would have priority over tax cuts if the Democrats had their way. The only Democrat...
...says. "It?s become a much bigger issue since the ?94, ?96 and ?98 campaigns, but there are still some Democrats who?re happy to vote for reform as long as it?s doomed to fail." (Kind of like the moderate Republicans who voted for that $792 billion tax cut that arrived DOA at the White House yesterday.) McCain has made a career - and the beginnings of a decent presidential run ?- by being the kind of guy who exposes hypocrisy on the Hill. He may find more of it this time than he?s bargaining...