WASHINGTON — As the House of
Representatives prepares to vote on the Concurrent Budget Resolution (H. Con. Res. 290),
The Concord Coalition today announced that it favors the alternative plan offered by the
Blue Dog Coalition over the Republican Budget Resolution and the four other alternatives.
WASHINGTON — As the House of
Representatives prepares to vote on the Concurrent Budget Resolution (H. Con. Res. 290),
The Concord Coalition today announced that it favors the alternative plan offered by the
Blue Dog Coalition over the Republican Budget Resolution and the four other alternatives.
“While The Concord Coalition does not necessarily agree with the plan’s
spending priorities, we believe the Blue Dog alternative provides the best overall
budgetary framework for the next five years. It
sets new discretionary spending caps at levels that are both realistic and fiscally
responsible. At the same time, it protects the Social Security surplus, strikes an
appropriate balance between competing uses of the projected non-Social Security surplus,
provides heavy emphasis on debt reduction, and encourages structural reforms of Social
Security and Medicare that will ensure long-term fiscal sustainability beyond mere trust
fund solvency,” said Concord’s Executive Director Robert Bixby.
Although The Concord Coalition applauds the Republican Budget Resolution for
drawing attention to the need for paring back government programs that are wasteful or
unnecessary, it concludes that this Budget Resolution suffers from the same basic flaw as
the FY 2000 Budget Resolution.
“The Republican Budget Resolution uses unrealistic discretionary spending
assumptions to pump up the projected on-budget surplus, which is then devoted almost
exclusively to tax cuts. This practice risks the resumption of on-budget deficits if the
tax cuts are enacted and the discretionary cuts never occur, or if the economy is less
robust than is now forecast.
“Unrealistic assumptions also lead to gimmicks. The Republican Budget
Resolution does not recommend adjusting the 1997 Balanced Budget Act spending caps, which
everyone acknowledges cannot be met. This means to meet the Budget Resolution numbers, an
even greater amount of gimmicks will be needed this year than were used last year. The danger of not recommending new caps in the
Budget Resolution is that it allows Congress to spend first and adjust the caps later ¾ once they see how much they’ve
spent. Obviously, this stands the whole
concept of caps on its head,” Bixby said.
While the main Democratic alternative contains realistic assumptions about
discretionary spending and takes an appropriately cautious approach to tax cuts, it also
contains general revenue credits to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which do
not address the programs’ looming cash deficits.
“In Concord’s view, general revenue credits will not ensure that the Social
Security surplus is used for debt reduction. Moreover,
‘solving’ much of the long-term imbalance in Social Security and Medicare by
committing general revenues to the trust funds does nothing to bring about reforms needed
to ensure the programs’ long-term fiscal sustainability. Indeed, by appearing to cure much of the problem,
this approach would make it more difficult to generate public support for the ‘hard
choices’ that ultimately must be made,” Bixby said.
