House Budget Committee Republicans are preparing a fiscal 1999 budget resolution that would eliminate some federal departments and cut spending by about $100 billion over the next five years.
Budget Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday said the blueprint will eliminate a "couple of departments." While he did not name the departments, Kasich said the list "would not be a surprise." A Budget Committee aide said he could not confirm which departments would be targeted. However, House Republicans in the past have proposed eliminating the Energy, Commerce and Education departments.
"When times are good, that's the time for us to reform inside the federal government. That's when it's easy to be able to shrink government," Kasich said on "Meet the Press."
The Budget Committee plan, which will be presented to GOP leaders shortly after they return from the Easter recess, will be marked up in committee in early May.
Budget Committee Republicans have been meeting over the past several weeks to discuss the plan. The committee aide said Monday that the plan will include the spending cuts. He said additional cuts beyond those identified in the balanced budget deal would not violate that accord. "The agreement said we could not spend above the caps," the aide said. "It didn't say we could not spend below the caps."
On "Meet the Press," Kasich reaffirmed House Republicans' commitment to use any tobacco settlement funds for a tax cut. And he said he wanted to include a tax cut in the budget and suggested broadening the 15 percent tax rate "so that more people would be taxed at 15 percent" might be possible. He said the income cutoff for eligibility would depend on how much "we're able to save in terms of shrinking government."
Kasich also suggested that it may be necessary to "do some things with the consumer price index" and "look at" the retirement age. Asked about CBO estimates that larger deficits are possible, Kasich bluntly declared that the CBO "hasn't been right in about a billion years."
For their part, Budget Committee Democrats have been unhappy that Republicans have waited so long before unveiling their budget. "We were disturbed that there was no budget resolution before the transportation bill," a House Democratic Budget Committee aide said. Committee Democrats are likely to propose a series of amendments to add President Clinton's initiatives to the budget and may offer an overall Democratic substitute, the aide said.
NEXT STORY: Counterdevolution