OMB Director Nussle Calls on Congress To Meet Spending Requests From President Bush or Face Possible Veto
Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle on Monday sent a letter to the House and Senate Budget and Appropriations committees "outlining veto threats over Democratic spending and tax policies -- before their budgets have been unveiled," CongressDaily reports. According to Nussle, President Bush will veto any fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills that exceed his overall spending requests and do not reduce by half the number and cost of earmarks included in FY 2008 bills. Bush also will "veto any attempt to increase taxes," Nussle wrote.In addition, Nussle called on Congress to approve proposals by Bush to reduce entitlement program spending. In his FY 2009 budget request, Bush proposed to reduce Medicare spending by $151 billion over five years. Nussle wrote, "The longer we put off a fix, the harder the fix will be."
The House and Senate Budget committees plan to mark up their FY 2009 budget resolutions this week (Cohn, CongressDaily, 3/3). The full House and Senate might consider budget resolutions as early as next week.
Prospects
The House and Senate FY 2009 budget resolutions likely will include more domestic spending and fewer tax cuts than Bush requested and "reject savings in Medicare," USA Today reports. According to USA Today, although "Bush was able to block most of the spending increases last year by refusing to go along," Democrats this year "say they will wait until 2009 if necessary for what they hope will be a Democratic president."
Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said that the budget resolutions will not include Medicare spending reductions, as those "are not the priorities of the American people." Conrad added that, although Bush last year "had no incentive to negotiate and didn't," this year "he'll have a powerful incentive to negotiate if he wants to be relevant."
Nussle said, "I'm perplexed by the majority's insistence on extra spending, when this step would jeopardize balancing the budget." He added that the Democratic Congress "has shown no signs it intends to meaningfully address the oncoming fiscal train wreck" from the increasing costs of entitlement programs (Wolf, USA Today, 3/4).
