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March 14, 2008

House and Senate Pass Budget Plans

By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — The House passed a $3 trillion Democratic spending plan Thursday,

and the Senate followed suit early Friday as Congress engaged in a day of budget
theater that had as much to do with the political bottom line as federal fiscal policy.
With three presidential candidates on hand, the Senate gave final party-line approval
to its budget after easily dismissing a politically charged plan to ban spending for one
year on pet projects sought by lawmakers. The final vote was 51 to 44.
Both parties seized on the annual debate over the spending blueprint as a way to
shape the 2008 campaign dialogue and try to force the White House contenders into
embarrassing votes or to build opposition to their policy ideas.
"There is a lot of jockeying going on," acknowledged Senator Lindsey Graham, the
South Carolina Republican who is a close ally of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the
presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The House voted 212 to 207 to approve the plan developed by Democrats, which
would increase spending on domestic programs like education, health care, veterans
benefits and new energy technology while allowing some tax cuts pushed by President
Bush to expire in two years.
"This budget charts a new direction for America," said Representative John M. Spratt
Jr., Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the Budget Committee. "In returning
to balance and funding critical priorities, it strengthens our economy and makes
America safer."
The House defeated a Republican alternative that would have slowed spending on
Medicare and other entitlement programs, permanently extended the tax cuts,
invested more in military spending and put a one-year freeze on the Congressional pet
projects known as earmarks.
Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republican on the House Budget
Committee, acknowledged that "earmarks proliferated on the Republican watch" in the
previous decade. Indeed, Mr. Ryan said: "Both parties are guilty. That's why we should
have a moratorium."
As the House sought to plow through work before a two-week break, its members
agreed to convene in a rare closed session to privately discuss the administration's
terrorist surveillance program before a vote Friday on a Democratic measure on the
eavesdropping that President Bush opposes.
In the Senate, Mr. McCain, eager to cast a symbolic vote against earmarks, swooped in
for the all-day budget vote-a-thon as did his prospective Democratic presidential rivals,
Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois. The two
Democrats, who also backed the earmark restriction, took time for a private
conversation on the floor as they and their colleagues milled about for hours while
dozens of votes were taken.
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But their colleagues demonstrated that they were far from ready to forego earmarks
and the moratorium proposal fell a whopping 31 votes short of the 60 it needed to
clear a procedural hurdle. Forty-five Democrats and 25 Republicans joined an
independent in blocking the plan on a 71-to-29 vote.
"We found out tonight that there is only one place in American that doesn't get it about
wasteful, earmark pork-barrel spending," Mr. McCain said after the vote as he took on
members of both parties for rejecting the ban.
The two budgets, which have to be reconciled for a final vote later this spring, are
nonbinding and represent no formal action on either spending or taxes. But a final
budget serves as the framework for later spending and tax decisions and as a policy
manifesto for the majority party.
Senate Democrats sought to quickly take the topic of tax cuts off the table. By a 99-to-
1 vote, the Senate extended elements of Mr. Bush's cuts that apply mainly to the
middle class, like the $1,000 child tax credit. But a proposal by Mr. Graham to make a
similar pledge on lower rates for capital gains and stock dividends was defeated, with
Senators Clinton and Obama among those opposing it.
Mr. McCain, who once opposed the tax cuts, sided with Mr. Graham. "The one thing we
should not do, under any circumstances given our present economy, is to raise taxes
on American workers who are already struggling to put food on their tables and gas in
their cars," Mr. McCain said.
Mr. Obama had a different view.
"The notion that we would pile up more mounds of debt, literally borrowing hundreds of
billions of dollars to pay for tax breaks for people who don't need them and weren't
even asking for them I think is unfortunate," he told reporters Thursday. "I think it's an
example of the kinds of flawed fiscal policies that have gotten us in such a hole under
this administration and a Republican Congress."
The margins on the major votes were close, and Vice President Dick Cheney was called
in to break an early tie. Also on hand was Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the
frail 90-year-old lawmaker who had been absent for weeks but registered his position
on early votes with a pronounced "yes" or "no."
Within hours of the House vote, the National Republican Congressional Committee was
issuing news releases aimed at three dozen Democrats, accusing them of backing a
historic tax increase through their support for the budget.
But Democrats said they were only setting the stage for eliminating tax breaks for the
affluent. Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said it was appropriate
"to eliminate tax giveaways to the richest people in America" to generate more money
for domestic programs that have been shortchanged.
In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans offered dueling amendments over the
estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.
The hour-long secret session approved by the House to discuss the terrorist
surveillance program raised concerns among some Democrats who questioned its
appropriateness and necessity. The last one was 25 years ago.
"It is a very, very serious matter when we do the public's business in secret," said
Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas.
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting