Word: panetta
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...Force Secretary Donald Rice announced the winner. Suddenly, after the expenditure of nearly $3.5 billion in development funds, official Washington was raising the questions that should have been asked five years ago: Who needs this jet? What is it for? And why does it cost so much? As Leon Panetta, chairman of the House Budget Committee, points out, "It is hard to justify building $100 million airplanes" in the light of the current budget deficit and increasingly urgent domestic needs...
...some small sacrifices to defuse the issue as he nears re-election. Besides, the White House knows that many Democrats will reflexively balk at the idea of asking seniors (or parents of kids who get but don't need subsidized school lunches) to pay more. House budget chairman Leon Panetta, a California Democrat, seemed to stumble into this trap last week when he warned Darman that the elderly will "raise hell" if the Medicare proposals stand. In political terms, it doesn't really matter whether the means tests find their way into law; for Bush and Darman, the readiness...
...leader George Mitchell, flanked by budget committee chairman Jim Sasser, favors a risky wait-'em-out approach, calculating that the nearer the dreaded sequester comes, the more malleable Bush will be. So far, Mitchell has prevailed over House Speaker Tom Foley, majority leader Richard Gephardt and budget chairman Leon Panetta, who, one White House official surmises, "would have preferred to wrap this up weeks...
...biggest strike against the Democrats is their continued refusal to accept domestic-spending reductions. When Budget Director Richard Darman suggested 47 cuts in health care, agriculture subsidies, federal loan guarantees and other giveaways good for $16 billion in savings next year, Panetta countered with a "core package" of reductions worth only $5.6 billion. Paltry though his offer was, Panetta lacked much support from fellow Democrats for even those meager measures. "None of our guys were ready to do that much," said a Democratic participant. Meanwhile, loyalty on the Republican side has broken down, especially on taxes. In recent weeks...
...damage, Administration officials tried to mask that miscalculation by claiming that the Democrats had reneged on the bargain. But Gephardt told Bush at a White House meeting Tuesday that not only had there never been a deal but that Darman had not presented a full proposal either. As Panetta said later, "We did not pledge that every time the Republicans slit their wrists we would slit ours...