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Clinton, GOP conclude 'amicable' budget meeting
July 12, 1999 WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, July 12) -- GOP congressional leaders emerged Monday evening from a White House meeting with President Clinton that both sides described as amicable, despite making little progress toward agreement on tax cuts, Social Security and other budget issues. "I think there are some areas we can work together on to try to find some compromises," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, (R- Ill.), said after the hour-long session in the Cabinet Room. 
But neither side offered specifics about resolving differences over how to spend the $2.9 trillion in budget surpluses projected over the next decade. Republicans still insisted after the meeting that most of the surpluses be used to cut taxes by roughly $800 billion over the next decade. The Clinton administration and congressional Democrats stood by their pledge to first save Social Security and Medicare, and then offer a smaller tax cut. "I think the priority has to be Social Security and Medicare," said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) No one expected the two sides to make substantial progress toward an agreement, especially since the meeting came months before the October 1 start of the new fiscal year. Just hours before the meeting, administration officials took the unusual step of broadly criticizing the proposal in advance of the potentially sensitive meeting. Throughout the day Monday, administration officials repeatedly said Republican proposals would sink the nation's Medicare health insurance system. Republicans "have laid out a budget that takes account of all of the available revenues and funds in the federal government for the next 10 years and not left anything for Medicare, even though it's going insolvent at best in 2015," National Economic Adviser Gene Sperling told reporters Monday. "I think that it's important that they understand that we think some of things that have come out ... are headed in the wrong direction," White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said of Republican plans. House Republicans have proposed an $850 billion plan that would cut income tax rates across the board by 10 percent over the next decade, reduce capital gains taxes and allow parents to set up tax-deferred accounts to pay for their children's education at private schools. Senate Republicans have put forward a $792 billion, 10-year plan that would cut the lowest tax rate from 15 percent to 14 percent and eliminate the so-called "marriage penalty" paid by many two-income families. It does not include capital gains cuts or the education accounts, both of which are opposed by congressional Democrats and the White House. "The Cold War is over. We have a surplus. Shouldn't we give some of this money back to working families?" Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) said Monday. "I say yes; the president says no." The GOP tax cut plans are more than three times as large as the $250 billion cut the White House is proposing. "The president has made it very clear that he will not sign any budget measure that doesn't put Social Security and Medicare first, that doesn't take those steps forward (and) certainly any measures that would put at risk the progress we've made in paying down the debt," said new Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. Clinton, in an interview published Sunday in The New York Times, said GOP tax cut plans would bring back the deficit. "If you pay for their tax cut and their defense proposal, it would restore the deficit," he said. "It would be, I think, very dumb to restore the deficit if we can avoid it." Republicans counter that their tax cuts will not threaten Social Security and Medicare and that they are as determined as the Democrats to shore up those programs. And they argue that if the federal government is collecting more tax money than it needs, some of the largesse should go back to the people who provided it in the first place. "If we're in that kind of surplus, we should allow people to keep more of their money," said Sen. Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma) on "Fox News Sunday." "Some people are paying way too much in taxes." Saying that Republicans and Clinton agree on the need to save Social Security and Medicare and pay down the national debt, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) called on the president to negotiate seriously, rather than using the issue for partisan purposes. "I keep getting mixed signals from the president. I don't know if he wants to get some things done with cooperation or whether he is going to go the partisan route, the political route," Lott said on NBC's "Meet the Press." CNN's David Ensor and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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MORE STORIES:Monday, July 12, 1999
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