Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 8, 1994 TAG: 9402080102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Even with the cuts, a $34.3 billion, or 2.3 percent, increase in spending is planned for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Most of the increase will go to pay for required increases in Medicare, Medicaid and other mandated programs.
Spending limits handcuffed Clinton's effort to shift spending toward future-oriented "investments" in his "New Democrat" priorities - education, job training, technology, environment, infrastructure and crime control.
Altogether, those categories would gain $14.8 billion in fiscal 1995, slightly less than 1 percent of total federal spending.
"This is a tough budget," said White House budget director Leon Panetta. "We had to make tough decisions not only on the spending-cut side, but on the investment side, as well."
Clinton emphasized the imperative of deficit reduction above all else when touting his budget at a conference Monday in Houston.
"The first thing we had to do was to cut the deficit," Clinton said. Last year's five-year plan to do that is powering this year's economic rebound, he boasted. "That's why interest rates are down and inflation is low and investment is up."
The 115 programs Clinton is seeking to kill outright would shave spending in fiscal 1995 by $675 million, less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of total federal spending.
Additional cuts in about 300 other federal programs would chop about $23 billion more in fiscal 1995 outlays, or about 1.5 percent of total federal spending.
Virtually everyone questioned on Capitol Hill agreed that many of Clinton's proposals to terminate some programs and cut others would not be adopted because they had strong political support.
Democrats lauded the budget, while Republicans focused on what they said it failed to do.
Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, called Clinton's plan "an MIA budget, because most of the administration's most important proposals - health care and welfare reform - are completely missing."
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said, "Most budgets are quickly forgotten, but this one will be remembered for what it doesn't contain."
But Sen. Jim Sasser, D-Tenn., chairman of the Budget Committee, contended that Clinton's health-care package would lead to big savings after 1998 by slowing the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and other federally subsidized health programs.
Clinton's new budget is driven overwhelmingly by rules set in last year's law to cut federal deficits by $500 billion through fiscal 1998. The fiscal 1995 deficit would total $176 billion, 40 percent less than projected when Clinton took office.
Almost all key tax increases and spending cuts needed to slash deficits came out of the deficit-reduction deal agreed to last year.
The only new broad-based tax increase Clinton proposes is a previously announced levy on tobacco to help finance health-care reforms - 75 cent a pack on cigarettes and other tobacco products. This would boost the tax to 99 cents a pack.
Last year, the White House Office of Management and Budget projected that the fiscal 1995 deficit would total $302 billion; now it is projected to hit $176 billion - $165 billion if Clinton's health-care reforms are enacted.
Keywords:
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by CNB