Spinach Now or Later

The top budget writers in Congress didn't intend it this way, but the budgets they unveiled last week offered graphic illustrations of the folly of President Bush's tax cuts. With their colleagues reeling from new assessments of the huge deficits that would be produced by the Bush economic plan, the chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees scrambled to come up with plans that showed an eventual return to balanced budgets. The two lawmakers chose different approaches, but both make clear that the tax cuts can't be paid for without significant spending cuts now or down the road.

In the Senate, Don Nickles (R-OK) accommodated most of the Bush tax cuts and still managed to show balance by 2013 largely through the time-honored trick of setting spending levels unreasonably low in the later years, when this year's budget plan will have been long forgotten. In the House, Jim Nussle (R-IA) adopted an even more aggressive approach that showed the budget in balance by 2010 (although this, like Mr. Nickles' proposal, includes a Social Security surplus once considered untouchable). Mr. Nussle called for cutting spending on discretionary programs not related to defense or homeland security by 1% in 2004 - a real cut, as opposed to the gauzy Senate promise of future trims. Over the next 10 years, he would reduce non-defense discretionary spending $200 billion below the current level; that's $100 billion more than Mr. Bush would cut. Even more important, Mr. Nussle's blueprint called for major cuts in mandatory spending programs as well: $470 billion over 10 years from health spending for the elderly and poor, food stamps, child nutrition, veterans benefits, and farm programs. The boldness of Mr. Nussle's approach could be measured by the howls of protest it produced even from some on his side of the aisle.

With mandatory spending now accounting for more than half of the budget, getting to balance - with or without tax cuts - will require Congress to take a hard look at these programs. Where we differ with Mr. Nussle is in the assessment of whether cuts of the magnitude he proposes can be adopted without inflicting major pain on the most vulnerable members of society. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that Mr. Nussle's cut of $12 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years would reduce the benefit from its current 91¢ per person per meal to about 85¢. That's hard to swallow, especially when served with a tax cut that would save the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers an average of $24,100 this year.

Both budget committees have been stacked with reliable conservatives, so it's no surprise that both blueprints were approved on party-line votes. But things promise to be a lot stickier on the floor this week. In the Senate, moderate Republicans who control the balance of power announced they will not accept tax cuts higher than $350 billion through 2013 - half the package that will come before them. Even more interesting is the situation in the House, which had been expected to dutifully do the leadership's bidding. Eleven moderate Republicans are now saying they won't vote for Mr. Nussle's plan. Neither would we, but Mr. Nussle deserves credit for taking deficits seriously and for being more honest than his colleagues about the price the country would have to pay for Mr. Bush's tax cuts.