NYT: Managing the Deficit with Plans to Spend

ECONOMIC VIEW
Managing the Deficit With Plans to Spend
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: March 21, 2004


Washington

FOR the most concise description of how fiscal self-restraint has changed in the last decade, look no further than the bill adopted last week by the House Budget Committee.

Strongly supported by President Bush, the bill would technically reinstate what was originally called the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. As modified in 1990, when the first President Bush reluctantly broke his no-new-taxes pledge, the law required that Congress offset the cost of new spending and new tax cuts with savings in other areas.

But the House bill makes one basic switch: where the old law attacked measures that would lead to a "net deficit increase,'' the new one attacks measures that lead to "an increase in direct spending.''

Put another way, the prime concern is not a balanced budget. It is growth in government spending. Unlike the "pay as you go'' rules of the 1990's, Congress would not have to offset the costs of new tax cuts....

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If Mr. Bush and Republican Congressional leaders prevail, the burden of reducing the federal budget deficit will fall primarily on domestic discretionary programs - housing vouchers for low-income families and public housing, grants to local police and fire departments and block grants for child care assistance....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/business/yourmoney/21view.html