WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Monday sent his ambitious new budget to a Congress controlled by his own party, but many of the plan's major components are already in trouble on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers will likely ratify the broad outlines of Bush's $2.2-trillion budget, but they are already giving a lukewarm-to-skeptical reception to his specific proposals to reform Medicare and Medicaid, cut taxes, expand oil drilling in Alaska and slap the strictest limits on domestic spending growth in years.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 05, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 15 inches; 548 words Type of Material: Correction
Rep. Sue Myrick -- An article in Section A on Tuesday on congressional reaction to the president's budget misidentified Rep. Sue Myrick as a Republican from South Carolina. She is from North Carolina.
Republican leaders are "trying to walk a tightrope," said Richard May, a former GOP staff director of the House Budget Committee. "They are trying to be supportive of the president, but they don't want to look like they are a rubber stamp."
Also potentially problematic among Bush's fellow Republicans is his decision to accept huge deficits for the foreseeable future -- $1.1 trillion over the next five years. Bush is, in effect, proposing a watershed change in GOP fiscal policy, abandoning the party's 1990s preoccupation with balancing the budget and reducing the size of government.
Republicans from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are queasy about the flood of red ink: Rep. Sue Wilkins Myrick (R-S.C.), a conservative, wants to further squeeze domestic spending to reduce the deficit, while moderate Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) wants to roll back the size of Bush's proposed tax cut.
"Deficits must be a temporary phenomenon, not a perpetual cycle," Snowe said in expressing concerns about Bush's budget.
Attacks by Democrats on Bush's budget centered on complaints about the large deficits it would create.
"This budget is breathtaking in its lack of fiscal responsibility," said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.
Democrats also charged the Bush plan would inadequately finance education and other programs, while providing benefits mostly to the wealthy through such proposals as ending the tax on corporate dividend income for individuals.
On top of the 10-year, $1.35-trillion tax cut the administration pushed through Congress in 2001, the new budget seeks an additional $1.3 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade.
"By demanding large tax cuts again even though there are no longer surpluses, the administration will starve the government of funds," said Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.
