Washington – Democratic budget writers are closing in on a compromise $2.9 trillion blueprint with big spending increases for military and domestic programs and a balanced federal ledger promised in five years.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees have been negotiating for weeks over tax cuts, spending levels and how to rewrite college aid programs this year.
The budget plan sets goals for subsequent tax and spending legislation, but lawmakers are not bound to it. It does, however, make a statement about the priorities of majority Democrats and provides an early test of the party’s ability to prove it can govern.
“It’s important … for the Congress of the United States to demonstrate that it can perform the essential functions of governance,” said the committee chairman, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “Having a budget is about as basic as it gets.”
Approving a House-Senate compromise budget is a prerequisite for the orderly consideration of 13 spending bills this summer for the government’s 2008 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. Democrats promise to get the annual appropriations process back on track after Republicans failed in 2006 to pass a budget and left most of the spending bills for the current year undone.
For 2008, Democrats would award a huge $50 billion spending increase to the Pentagon’s “core” budget – the $481 billion not directly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The budget plan also would cement a promise by Democrats to restore pay- as-you-go rules. Republicans abandoned these in 2001 in order to pass President Bush’s tax cuts.
