WASHINGTON - President Clinton sent Congress yesterday a five-year plan to balance the federal budget for the first time since man set foot on the moon, even as he proposed a bounty of middle-class tax cuts, sizable new social program spending and a vastly expanded national role in education.
During a news conference with his senior economic team, Clinton talked little of the sacrifice and pain required to restore fiscal order in Washington. Instead, he maintained most of the hard work already has been done and vowed to leave the government's ledgers in such good shape when he leaves office that deficit spending will be eradicated for decades to come.
"My plan balances the budget while maintaining the balance of our values," Clinton said. Although finishing the task "will not be easy," he said, "the lion's share of the savings that we needed to make from the nightmarish projections we had four years ago have been put in place already and it remains for us to take the last steps."
Clinton's five-year budget plan relies on $100 billion in savings from Medicare and $22 billion from Medicaid; $76 billion from extended or new taxes on businesses and airline tickets; $47.3 billion from new user fees; $36.1 billion from the sale of broadcast spectrum licenses; and a host of cuts in defense and general government spending.
While the president spruced up his latest budget proposal with $98 billion in tax breaks and high-profile spending initiatives for education, health care and welfare, it is largely the same plan he offered a year ago that the Republicans rejected.
Yet in contrast to the past two years, when Republicans berated Clinton's balanced-budget proposals as hollow promises and twice closed the government in protest, his latest plan received a polite, though skeptical, reception on Capitol Hill. Stung by the public backlash to the shutdowns and Clinton's re-election, House and Senate leaders signaled a willingness to accommodate large chunks of the president's agenda, provided the budget is shorn of what some describe as gimmicks and overly optimistic economic forecasts.
"Well, I suppose that you could say it's alive, but it's definitely not kicking," Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), said. Lott said he found "some encouragement" in the plan, though he ticked off criticisms that led him to conclude that, "it appears that the president's budget fails several of these credibility tests."
Other GOP congressional reaction was likewise mixed. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), charged that the budget proposal represents "a journey to Shangri-La, a mythical place where spending goes up ... and where budgets magically balance with a wave of the hand."