Washington – House Republicans are looking at delaying some federal spending, including money for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare and thousands of highway projects, to offset the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a leading GOP fiscal conservative said Sunday.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said there is a need for drastic spending cuts in “big-ticket items.” However, Democrats appearing on Sunday news programs questioned how President Bush can trim the budget to pay for Katrina recovery and support tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Where is he going to find roughly half a trillion dollars over the next several years for Iraq and for Katrina?” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., asked on “Late Edition” on CNN.
Raising taxes or not making permanent the president’s tax cuts is not the answer now, said Pence, head of the Republican Study Group, the spearhead group for the GOP’s most conservative members.
“We simply cannot break the bank of the federal budget,” Pence told ABC’s “This Week.” “We simply can’t allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren.”
The drug-benefit program, set to begin Jan. 1, is expected to cost $40 billion a year. Last month, Bush signed a $286.4 billion highway bill that has been criticized for including about 6,000 projects added by lawmakers to benefit their districts and states.
Setting aside all of those additional highway projects and delaying the drug benefit by a year are expected to be among the proposals House Republicans are preparing for “Operation Offset” this week, Pence said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said an across-the-board cut in spending, excluding defense spending, would be appropriate. He suggested lawmakers consider delaying the drug benefit and review the highway and energy bills passed this summer.
Calling talk among Republican senators of proceeding with a plan to repeal the estate tax “mind-boggling,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said the country could not fight a war in Iraq, rebuild the Gulf Coast region and deal with other domestic needs while cutting taxes for the wealthy.
“We need some adult supervision of the budget process. And we need to take responsibility for this process. That’s something that we need from the president as well as our congressional leaders,” Obama told “Face the Nation” on CBS.
