-National
Spotlight
Budget plan offers first surplus since 1969
■ President Clinton
proposes help for child
care and Medicare, but
Republicans criticize it as
a tax-and-spend policy.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President
Clinton, declaring an end to “an era of
exploding deficits,” Monday sent
Congress a $1.73 trillion budget pro
posal that promises a history-making
achievement - the first surplus in three
decades.
But Republicans, who control
Congress, were not impressed by
Clinton’s expected $9.5 billion surplus,
accusing the president of returning to
old-fashioned Democratic tax-and
spend policies.
“This is a budget only a liberal
could love,” House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, R-Ga., said. “This is a far cry
from the leaner, more flexible govern
ment that the president promised.”
And on the other side of the Capitol,
Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, said, “This
budget comes as close to a tax-and
spend budget as any budget we’ve seen
since 1979, since Jimmy Carter was
president.”
Clinton unveiled his budget at a
White House ceremony, saying, “This
budget marks the end of an era, an end
to decades of deficits that have shack
led our economy, paralyzed our politics
and held our people back.”
To underscore his achievement,
Clinton drew a gigantic zero on a chart
labeled 1999 budget deficit, drawing
applause from the crowd of administra
tion officials and congressional
Democrats.
However, Republicans accused
Clinton of breaking faith with last sum
mer’s balanced budget agreement with
Congress by putting forward dozens of
new spending programs.
“It looks like the president wants to
eliminate state and local government.
He wants to run everything out of
Washington,” complained House
Budget Committee Chairman John
Kasich, R-Ohio.
In addition to holding out the
prospect of the first federal budget sur
plus since 1969, Clinton’s ambitious
plan calls for expanding the federal
government’s role in providing child
care, increasing medical research, low
ering the age limits for Medicare and
helping to hire 100,000 new teachers to
reduce class sizes in the nation’s
schools. Overall, Clinton’s 1999 budget
for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 pro
poses a 3.9 percent increase from this
year’s spending levels.
Republicans want to use the rev
enue windfall from the strong economy
to provide billions of dollars in tax
relief, including eliminating the “mar
riage penalty” on two-earner couples.
But Clinton argued in his budget
message, “We should not spend a sur
plus that we don’t yet have.”
Today, Clinton repeated his chal
lenge to Congress to “Save Social
Security first,” earmarking any budget
surpluses to the giant government trust
fund now projected to go broke in 2029
under the weight of baby-boomer
retirements.
“Those of us in the Baby Boom
generation” have the chance “to tell our
own children that when we retire and
start drawing Social Security, it isn’t
going to bankrupt them to take care of
us and undermine their own ability to
take care of their own children,” he said.
The president’s prescription of
more spending would be paid for in part
by $105.6 billion in tax increases and
user fees, chiefly on tobacco, corpora
tions and investors who have made
investments over five years.
At the same time, Clinton’s budget
calls for $24.2 billion in tax cuts,
including child care tax credits for
working families.
It would provide one-third more in
resources for education and job training
in 1999 and proposes $21.3 billion over
five years for new child-care initiatives.
The budget would double to 2 million
the number of youngsters getting feder
al child care subsidies, boost spending
on the Head Start preschool program
and provide more support for business
es and states running child care pro
grams.
The proposal also would substan
tially increase medical research on can
cer, AIDS and other diseases and signif
icantly expand Medicare by letting peo
ple aged 55 to 64 buy into the govern
ment program that provides health care
for the elderly.
Clinton would pay for his new ini
tiatives in part with $65.5 billion in
higher tobacco taxes over five years
through enactment of a tobacco settle
ment that faces an uphill battle in
Congress.
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