N.H., Maine Delegates Debate Points of Bush Budget Proposal
WASHINGTON—As members of Congress debated President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2004 budget this week, members of the New Hampshire and Maine delegations were divided about their support for Bush’s tax cuts and budget proposal.
“We are in challenging and difficult times, and we have work in front of us that will require us to make difficult choices and to set the right priorities for our country,” Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) said on the Senate floor.
He said that slow economic times “were not created by tax cuts, inflation or a slowdown in consumer spending” but by a slowdown in business investment and that Bush’s budget was aimed at solving that problem.
“This budget sets forward a realistic, reasonable and common-sense limit on federal spending,” he said. “It sets forward principles for an economic growth package we all know is needed in America … and reflects common sense when you look at the economic realities, the budget realities and the national security realities we have.”
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) agreed with Sununu, saying in an interview that Bush’s budget “does the job we need it to do in these tight fiscal times.”
New Hampshire’s Republican House members lauded the funds Bush’s budget would provide in areas like education and stressed the need for “fiscal restraint.”
“While a slow economy and war are certainly reasons to expect short-term deficits, they definitely should not be used as excuses to throw all fiscal restraint out the window,” Rep. Charlie Bass said in a statement. “To control the deficit and return to surplus we must work to cut unnecessary and wasteful spending.”
In an interview, Rep. Jeb Bradley said, “I’m not saying I agree on each and every thought in the budget, and there are definitely things that concern me, but it calls for spending restraint, which I think is necessary.”
Bradley cited in particular his objections to the budget’s treatment of veterans’ benefits.
“I think it’s very important to fulfill our commitment to those who have so ably defended our country before,” he said, “and on the eve of action in Iraq, those who are about to do it again.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) believes that Congress should see what happens with the war before making a final decision on a fiscal stimulus package.
“At this point, she would not support a tax cut at all,” Collins’ chief of staff, Steve Abbott, said in an interview. “We have to get through the war and see what impact it has on the economy. No one knows yet whether it could improve the economy-there was a surge in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average after President Bush’s speech-or not.”
Abbott said that Sen. Collins would be interested in a sizeable stimulus package if, after the war, the economy was still in bad shape.
Several members urged significant changes to the proposed budget before it is passed, arguing that Bush’s tax-cutting proposals as they stand will not relieve the economy.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) has been working with the bipartisan Senate Centrist Coalition for several weeks in an effort to reduce the size of the Administration’s $728 billion tax-cut package to $350 billion, effectively halving it.
“[Sen. Snowe] believes we do need an immediate and temporary economic stimulus, but she has concerns about the size of the number proposed by the Administration,” Elizabeth Wenk, Snowe’s press secretary, said in an interview.
Snowe was expected to introduce the reduced growth package in the Senate on Thursday, along with coalition members Sens. John Breaux (D-La.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine) questioned the effectiveness of Bush’s budget and his plan to stimulate the economy.
“If the budget passes and the policies reflected in it become law, this will be the greatest transfer of wealth from middle-income America to the wealthiest people in America that I’ve ever seen in my six years in Congress,” he said in an interview. “It’s astonishing, because the tax cuts are structured to provide most of the money to the very wealthy and do little to promote economic growth.”
Allen said that Bush’s budget would dramatically reduce benefits to Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health and that the economic model posed by the budget would not stimulate the national economy.
“[The budget] reflects values that I don’t understand,” he said. “This is the seventh budget I’ve seen since I entered the Congress, and it is also the most irrational I’ve ever seen.”
Published in Foster’s Daily Democrat, in New Hampshire.
