Word: gramm
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...Gramm-Rudman is designed to work with a kind of relentless efficiency. The deficit ceilings set by the bill march inexorably downward. The target is $171.9 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, and $144 billion for 1987. Then the bill decrees that the deficit go down by $36 billion annual increments: to $108 billion in 1988, $72 billion in 1989, $36 billion in 1990 and finally zero in 1991. If Congress fails to meet these targets, the cuts that automatically kick in will be evenly divided between defense and domestic programs, and they are likely...
...Gramm-Rudman approach seems a strange abdication of budget-setting powers, Congress gave a vivid display last week of its inability to deal with spending through its normal procedures. Having failed to complete work on six of 13 appropriations bills, Congress struggled to pass a $498 billion catchall measure for 1986 that Reagan threatened to veto because it gives too much to domestic programs and too little to defense. At the same time, Congress scrambled to finish a $50 billion farm bill, also regarded as veto bait because it exceeds the White House target by $5 billion. Even...
...painful surgery begins next month, when the White House and Capitol Hill begin looking for $50 billion in savings. Under Gramm-Rudman, this year some 70% of all federal spending, including sacred cows like Social Security and antipoverty programs like food stamps, is protected from the budget ax. At least half the budget will be protected in future years. That, of course, means deeper cuts in everything else, from environmental protection to federal housing subsidies...
...back halls of the Capitol, Gramm-Rudman brought hoots of derision from staffers. "Today we begin Government by Veg-O-Matic," declared Chris Matthews, a top aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill, sardonically referring to the kitchen device once hawked on late-night TV ("It slices! It dices! It really, really works!"). On the floor, some prominent legislators were scornful. Gramm-Rudman, huffed Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, "is just about the dumbest piece of legislation I have seen in my 15 years on Capitol Hill." O'Neill himself warned, "Wait until...
...notion that the Gramm-Rudman Amendment, without modifications or a tax increase, can magically make the deficit disappear collapses as soon as one studies the numbers involved. With annual spending now at almost $1 trillion, the act's purpose is to reduce to zero an annual deficit currently running at some $200 billion. Yet about 70% of this year's budget, and at least half in future years, could be protected from automatic cuts. That means the increasingly painful slashes will have to come from just part of the pie, and more than half of that portion goes...