Budget committee kills pay-go amendment

[Beet]

By David S. Broder
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B07

...The key Democratic amendment was disposed of in less than 20 minutes, with nary a show of emotion on either side. The handful of reporters in attendance dozed through a lethargic debate between Democrat Dennis Moore of Kansas and Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina.

Moore and other Democrats were trying to reimpose the budget rule known as "pay-go." That requirement simply says any spending increase or tax cut is to be offset by a comparable saving to avoid increasing the deficit, unless a supermajority of 60 percent of the lawmakers votes to make an exception.

The rule was in effect from 1991 to 2002 and contributed directly to whittling away the deficits and moving the budget into surplus.

But after Bush became president, Congress discarded the rule -- an action that Alan Greenspan and many other fiscal conservatives deplored.

In the Senate on March 14, Democrats tried to revive the rule and failed on a 50 to 50 tie vote. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, led the effort to defeat it, arguing that it would inevitably force a tax increase. Gregg was not the least embarrassed when Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who offered the amendment to bring back "pay-go," quoted Gregg's own words from a 2002 debate.

Four years ago, Gregg said: "If we do not do this, if we do not put back in place caps and pay-go mechanisms, we will have no budget discipline in this Congress, and, as a result, we will dramatically aggravate the deficit, which, of course, impacts a lot of important issues but especially impacts Social Security."

When Conrad quoted those words, Gregg replied: "I was right then, and I am right now. Times change, and the dynamics of what is happening around here change substantively."

That argument was replayed in the House Budget Committee, with Republicans unanimously opposing the reimposition of the pay-go rule, while Democrats supported it. The roll call on the amendment was 15 yes, 21 no -- unmentioned in the news accounts reporting the 22 to 17 vote that sent the whole bill forward.