Wrong Budget Priorities

Just a word on the budget deal that passed the House and Senate very late last night. By very narrow margins in both chambers, the budget plan for the next five years calls for $2.56 trillion in federal spending for fiscal year 2006, opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration and drilling, cuts Medicaid by $10 billion over five years, and offers $106 billion in tax cuts through 2010.

Couldn't we have gotten away with $96 billion in tax cuts and kept Medicaid intact? If Bush & Co. are really interested in paying down the federal deficit (which, they argue, this budget will decrease from $412 billion in 2005 to $383 billion next year and $211 billion by 2010), why keep passing more tax cuts? I'm not asking for tax increases, but are more cuts necessary right now? I don't disagree with a spending freeze in principle, but when it's coupled with $106 billion in tax cuts, I'm not sure it's necessarily the right option.

Increases in homeland security spending and defense are clearly a necessary priority - it's unfortunate, but it's true. But the cuts in other domestic spending and entitlement programs didn't need to be slashed in order to fund more tax cuts. The most objectionable portion of the budget for me, of course, is that provision allowing the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which I feel is yet another misguided priority. If we've got $106 billion (or even $96 billion, if you take out that for Medicaid) to play with, let's use it to fund research and development of fuel efficient cars and trucks, so that we really can decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

This budget resolution is nonbinding, but it "provides an economic blueprint that lawmakers can use to pass specific tax and spending legislation later in the year," says the New York Times.

In the House, the budget passed 214-211. No Democrats voted for the plan, while fifteen Republicans (Charlie Bass, Sherwood Boehlert, Mike Castle, Virgil Goode, Mark Green, Gil Gutknecht, Nancy Johnson, Tim Johnson, Walter Jones, Jim Leach, Frank LoBiondo, Jim Ramstad, Jim Saxton, Chris Shays, and Rob Simmons) voted with the minority. Interestingly, seven Democrats weren't present for the vote (making it at least theoretically possible that the budget might have failed had they been there).

The prospects for passage in the Senate were much dimmer for much of the day, apparently - Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon along with several other moderates were holding out and trying to remove the Medicaid cuts from the budget (the House's original version of the budget featured even higher slashes, while the Senate's preserved the program at its current level). These moderates only signed onto the bill after HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt "promised to establish a federal advisory panel that would deliver recommended changes to the Medicaid system by September, before Congress enacts legislation to codify the budget savings," reports the Washington Post. In the end, as in the House, no Democrats supported the budget; Republicans DeWine, Voinovich and Chafee opposed it.

As always, it's a question of priorities. I'm hopeful that perhaps over the course of the rest of the budget process, the moderates will continue to push to restore some of the cuts to Medicaid and other domestic programs by removing a few of the tax cuts (they haven't happened yet, so no that does not mean a tax increase). There is still time, and we must all make the most of it.