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Politics

Senate passes Democratic budget outline

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Senate approved a Democratic plan Friday that promises a balanced budget in five years by mixing spending increases with partial renewal of expiring tax cuts.

The $2.9-trillion budget outline won approval on a 52-47 vote, but only after Democratic moderates rewrote it to favor extending several popular tax cuts that are to expire at the end of the decade.

The most immediate impact would be to sanction big spending increases when lawmakers later this year write budget bills for the Pentagon and domestic Cabinet agencies.

The vote was a victory for Senate leaders who viewed passing a budget as a key sign of Democrats' ability to govern.

Congress failed to pass a budget last year, and Democrats didn't even bring one to the floor when controlling the Senate in 2002.

The Democratic blueprint is nonbinding but sets guidelines for legislation.

It would require that lawmakers seeking to cut taxes or boost benefit programs - such as Medicare, children's health care or farm subsidies - "pay for" the changes with tax increases or offsetting spending cuts.

The budget suffers, however, from some of the same flaws Democrats see in President Bush's February budget plan. Like Bush, the Democrats left out funding for the long-term costs of the war in Iraq and for fixing the alternative minimum tax that threatens unsuspecting middle-class families.

"I don't assert that this is a perfect budget," said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "But at the end of the day, the test for us is, 'Can we write a budget for our country?' "

Republicans criticized the Democratic plan for allowing above-inflation increases for domestic agency budgets and for assuming that lower taxes on income, inheritances and investments passed during Bush's first term will expire in 2010.

Conrad's original budget assumed all of Bush tax cuts would expire in 2010, creating a $132-billion surplus in 2012. But Democrats who voted for the 2001 Bush tax cuts - including Max Baucus of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas - moved to devote that surplus to renewing tax cuts for the middle class.

Nonmilitary spending would increase by $18-billion under the Democratic plan, about a 4 percent increase that's much larger than passed in recent years by GOP-controlled Congresses.

Veterans programs, education, health research and homeland security programs would be the big winners under the blueprint.

Fast Facts:

How they voted

The vote was mostly along party lines, though two Republicans, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, joined the Democrats in backing the plan.

[Last modified March 24, 2007, 02:10:59]