Thursday, January 22, 2004
Republicans urge Bush to cut spending
40 members say deficit is getting out of control
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- A day after President Bush vowed to submit an austere budget and halve the
deficit in five years, conservatives in his own party said they were not satisfied and stepped up their
campaign to force the White House and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to do more to hold down
the growth of government spending.
A group of 40 Republican House members gathered to hash out how to press Bush and the
congressional leadership to deal with spending increases that they say are running out of control and
a deficit that is reaching alarming proportions.
Their discomfort has been echoed and encouraged over the past few days and weeks by reports and
statements from conservative researchers and commentators who support Bush on most issues, such
as the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, a political action committee, and the editorial page
of The Wall Street Journal.
"The president used the State of the Union to defend past spending increases and he made eight
specific calls for new spending increases," said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at Heritage. "But he
made zero calls for spending cuts."
After long blaming the recession and the war on terror for the sharp swing from budget surpluses to
deficits, Bush is now facing political pressure not just from small-government conservatives in
Congress and Democrats who say his tax cuts have plunged the government into a sea of red ink,
but also from voters.
Polls show that the widening deficit is of increasing concern to the electorate, and that Republicans
are losing their traditional advantage over Democrats on the issue. A poll this month by the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press found that 51 percent of respondents called the budget
deficit one of the top priorities for Bush and Congress. That was up from 40 percent a year earlier
and 35 percent two years ago.
Democrats said Bush has mortgaged the nation's future to pay for repeated rounds of tax cuts whose
benefits have gone largely to the wealthy but that have failed to deliver the promised rebound in job
creation. The party's presidential candidates regularly use the deficit as a proxy for Bush's overall
economic management, and make a case that the budget shortfalls are leading the government to
underfund health and education programs.
The government ran a deficit of $374 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, and it is expected to be
about $500 billion for the current fiscal year. When Bush took office three years ago, the
Congressional Budget Office forecast a surplus for the following decade of $5.6 trillion.
According to calculations by the Heritage Foundation, government outlays for the current fiscal year
will rise 9 percent, following increases of 13 percent in 2002 and 12 percent in 2003, making the
past few years one of the fastest growing periods of government spending since the 1960s. White
House officials said Bush has spent money necessary for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to
protect the nation from terrorism and that domestic spending outside of security has been held in
check.
Fiscal conservatives said it would be hard for them to make progress in an election year, when
members of both parties would be eager to bring more federal funding home to their districts.
"You're going to have someone upset with you if you do the right thing," said Rep. Sue Myrick,
R-N.C., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the group whose members were meeting to
agree on ways to hold down spending and address the deficit. "That's what we've got to find out: Are
our members willing to stand up and do the right thing?" |
