U.S. Senate Approves President’s $2.2 Trillion Spending Package, Tax Cut Package Still Up In The Air
WASHINGTON– After days of intense debate over President Bush’s plan to cut taxes, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved the president’s request for $2.2 trillion to run the government in fiscal year 2004.
The budget passed 56-44; the Republican senators from New Hampshire, John Sununu and Judd Gregg, voted for the spending package and the Democratic senators from Massachusetts, John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, voted against it.
The vote came a day after the Senate narrowly agreed to reduce Bush’s proposed tax cuts over the next 10 years from $726 billion to $350 billion. The decision of a few moderate Republicans to join forces with the Democrats in Tuesday’s vote reversed an earlier decision by the Senate to reject the reduced tax cut proposal. Republicans say that Bush’s plan would boost the economy and create jobs. Democrats and the GOP opposition argue that Bush’s tax cut is too large at a time of war, when the country is facing record deficits and increasing costs to defend the homeland.
The Senate budget resolution must now be reconciled with the House version, which includes the president’s full $726 billion tax cut. Congressman Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., said in an interview Wednesday that the tax-cut number should fall somewhere in the middle of what Bush proposed and what the Senate approved.
“It’s open to further amendments at this point, so what the final package is remains to be seen,” Bradley said Wednesday. “We will have to begin negotiations to reconcile the differences between the two bodies.”
Bradley said the tax cut would probably be lower than he’d like, but he hopes it is still enough to spark an economic growth spurt.
“In historic times, with fighting the war on terror, with a significant recession, we need a stimulus package that gets the economy moving again,” he said. “That will be the best shot in the arm for the economy.”
Massachusetts’s lawmakers scorned the Republicans for focusing on a tax cut when the country is at war. Congressman Martin T. Meehan, who voted against the budget on the House side last week, said in an interview Wednesday that it’s inconceivable “at a time when we’re asking Americans to sacrifice, when some of our men and women in uniform are making the ultimate sacrifice, to give a tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.”
In a Senate speech Monday, Kennedy said he’s baffled that at a time when most Americans are tuned into television news coverage of the war in Iraq, Congress was pondering a budget without money for war-related expenses.
“It is as though this budget had been drafted in a sound-proofed room, so that the sounds of war and the voices of the American people could not be heard,” Kennedy said.
The president plans to pay for the war through a supplemental budget, which includes money that that is not appropriated in the regular budget. Bush is asking Congress for almost $75 billion to pay for the first 30 days of the war. The money would be spent to pay the troops, replenish weapons and equipment and help rebuild Iraq when the war ends.
Unlike the president’s fiscal year 2004 budget and proposed tax cut, the war budget is not likely to face much opposition. Meehan, D-Lowell, said that while he is skeptical of the price tag, he expects the war budget to gain bipartisan support.
“Certainly, with our troops in harm’s way, we need to provide money for the war,” he said. But $75 billion “really isn’t the cost of the war. It’s only based on a brief period of time. It assumes a short war, and while we’re making progress, we can’t be sure of the length of the war.”
Meehan said the president’s supplemental war budget does not include sufficient funds to rebuild Iraq. Meehan said he hopes United States can get “other countries to share that cost with us.”
The New Hampshire delegation backed the war budget without question, with Bradley calling the $74.7 billion price tag “appropriate” and Sununu labeling it a “common sense package.”
“This spending is needed now,” Sununu said in a statement.
“We really have to move forward with paying for our troops to be over there,” said Bradley, a freshman this year.
Congress is likely to massage the war budget when it goes before the House and Senate Appropriations Committees next week, but Gregg pledged to make sure “our brave men and women have the resources they need to be successful in Iraq.”
“They are doing a tremendous job, and I expect Congress to approve these funds,” Gregg said in a statement.
Published in The Lawrence Eagle Tribune, in Massachusetts.
