David Minge: “we are dealing with a very difficult question here this afternoon, and that is, how does this institution reconcile the…”

“we are dealing with a very difficult question here this afternoon, and that is, how does this institution reconcile the serious political differences that exist in the country with respect to the budget of the United States of America? The President took a stab at this when he sent to Congress a budget in early February. Unfortunately, he did not have the benefit of the Congressional Budget Office in projecting revenues and expenditures in making up this budget. CBO had not yet reached that stage in its analysis that it could provide that type of assistance. Once the budget arrived, CBO did attempt to evaluate, or score, the budget. In the meantime, the Office of Management and Budget had provided the President with that guidance. We now find that the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office disagree. The President attempted to address this difficult situation by having a so-called fail-safe or trigger mechanism, that tax cuts and certain expenditure programs would be sunsetted, reduced, if the budget was not balanced by the year 2002. For this reason, the Congressional Budget Office said that technically it can balance by 2002. Now, it would be nice if the President would simply respond to each request that we send to him from the Hill, submit new budgets, and in a sense be negotiating with himself.”