–Senate Budget Committee Chief To Unveil Plan At 2:45 p.m. Tuesday
–Senate Budget Panel To Mark-Up Conrad’s Budget Wednesday, Thursday
–House Budget Chief Says Need ‘Honest Debate’ About Fiscal Options

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad
will unveil his fiscal year 2013 budget resolution Tuesday afternoon and
he hopes to persuade his panel to approve his plan by Thursday.

Conrad will release his plan at 2:45 p.m. ET, and said the Senate
Budget Committee will mark-up the resolution Wednesday and Thursday.

As of Monday afternoon, Conrad told reporters that he was still
“locking down details” of his budget. He is likely to brief Senate
Democrats on his plan during the party’s regular Tuesday lunch caucus.

Conrad has not said what his budget will contain, but in Budget
Committee hearings this winter and spring, he has called for bold fiscal
remedies to alter the current trajectory of American fiscal policy.

He has said the U.S.’s fiscal situation requires a 10-year deficit
reduction plan that is even greater than the $4 trillion package
developed by the Simpson-Bowles committee at the end of 2010.

The Senate Budget Committee chairman said his “fondest wish” would
be for Congress to support a deficit reduction plan of about $5.5
trillion over a decade.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signalled that he does not
expect the full Senate to debate any budget resolution this spring.

Reid has said last year’s debt ceiling agreement has already
settled discretionary spending levels for the coming fiscal year which
is one of the central purposes of a budget resolution.

Budget resolutions set broad spending and revenue goals and make
deficit projections. They are congressional blueprints and are not
binding law. To actually change spending and tax laws, separate
legislation is needed.

Several weeks ago, the House approved House Budget Committee
Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget resolution on a 228 to 191 vote. All
Democrats opposed the GOP budget; all Republicans, except for 10, voted
in favor.

Ryan has said his budget would cut spending by $5 trillion more
than would Obama’s budget over a decade and would reduce deficits by
$3.3 trillion more than would the president’s budget.

That plan would make deep cuts in the projected growth of federal
spending and endorses the fundamental overhaul of Medicare, Medicaid and
welfare programs. It also calls for repealing the 2010 health care law.

Ryan’s budget backs the extension of Bush-era tax cuts and
undertaking fundamental tax reform in which the current six individual
rates would be collapsed into two rates, 10% and 25%. The corporate rate
would be cut to 25%. He argues that so-called tax expenditures should be
sharply curtailed, but does not say which ones should be eliminated or
reduced.

The budget sets FY’13 discretionary spending at $1.028 trillion,
$19 billion below the $1.047 trillion that was allowed for in last
summer’s debt ceiling agreement.

Ryan also calls for enacting a package of spending cuts to prevent
the $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to
begin next January.

In a statement Tuesday, Ryan blasted Senate Democrats for not
passing a budget resolution since 2009, arguing that congressional
Republicans have “lacked partners” to deal with serious fiscal
challenges.

Ryan said he hopes Conrad’s budget “grasps the gravity of our
fiscal challenges” and contributes to an “honest debate on our nation’s
fiscal future.”

** MNI Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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