Why Bush’s Congress-Bashing on Federal Spending Just Doesn’t Add Up

President Bush wants the voters to believe that he has made valiant efforts to cut government spending, but has been thwarted by a spendthrift Congress. He implies that Congress failed to live up to the 1990 budget agreement, for which he broke his no-new-taxes campaign promise. He claims that he has submitted specific proposals for balancing the budget, which Congress has rejected.

There is little truth to any of these allegations. Nevertheless, they are widely believed, even by Democrats. People concerned about rising federal spending and the huge federal deficit usually put more blame on Congress than the President, no matter what their political affiliation.

The public image of the Congress is so abysmal these days that anyone who rises to the defense of our elected lawmakers invites public scorn and disbelief. Gov. Bill Clinton has wisely heeded advice not to try.

Even its defenders must admit that Congress itself has done great damage to its collective image. Clubbiness, insensitivity to public outrage over perks, sloppy management of its internal affairs, and tolerance for delinquent colleagues have undermined public confidence in Congress as an institution.

It hardly matters that the notorious “House Bank” was not a bank at all, but an arrangement for members to cover short-term overdrafts by borrowing from each other. Congress should have realized how hard it would be to explain this odd arrangement to citizens who cannot write overdrafts. Millions of Americans now believe that members of Congress are the sort of untrustworthy folks who bounce checks. Fortunately for the country, however, Congress in recent years has been a far better steward of the public’s money than of its own image.

Getting the record straight is difficult because budget matters are arcane and demand more concentration that most people are willing to devote to a political argument. There are two general types of federal spending, “discretionary” and “mandatory.” Discretionary spending, which accounts for only about a third of the total, is governed by appropriations of specific amounts for particular programs. In fiscal years 1991 and 1992, the Congress appropriated less than the President requested for discretionary spending. When the President announced in his speech to the Detroit Economic Club that he would veto all fiscal year 1993 appropriation bills that exceeded his request, he did not mention that the total amount Congress wanted to appropriate was actually less than he wanted, although several individual appropriation bills were higher.

In general, Congress has reduced the President’s requests for defense and international spending, while adding money for domestic programs. The argument is over priorities, not total sums. President Bush, like President Ronald Reagan before him, accuses the Congress of wanting “big government,” while castigating them for scaling back his defense requests. In the Bush-Reagan lexicon, defense programs do not count as government spending.

Mandatory spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the total, consists of payments that must be made under existing law to people entitled to interest on their government bonds or benefits under Social Security, food stamps, agricultural price supports and other such programs.

Mandatory spending is going up rapidly, but not because the Congress is adding new entitlements. Interest payments have risen because large deficits increase the debt. Food stamp payments have increased because the number of poor people has gone up. By far, the biggest reason for mandatory spending growth, however, has been health care inflation that has increased the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, as it has the cost of privately insured medical care.

The budget agreement of 1990 was a major plus for fiscal responsibility for which the President ought to be claiming some credit. It did raise taxes, but it also put rigid caps on discretionary spending and instituted a pay-as-you-go rule that required any new entitlements to be offset by equal savings.

Adhering to the agreement has required considerable discipline and some painful political choices. Unfortunately, the benefits are hard to demonstrate. Total spending is still rising because of the impact of the recession and medical inflation on mandatory spending, and the deficit has skyrocketed because the recession has cut revenue, and the savings and loan bailout has required additional borrowing. Hence, it is hard to demonstrate the benefits of adhering to the agreement--”it could have been worse” is hardly a rallying cry--and easy for the President to be believed when he disparages the Congress.

The deficit is likely to come down as the economy recovers from recession and the savings and loan bailout ends, but the problem is far from solved. Even on optimistic assumption--moderate growth in the economy, continuation of caps on domestic appropriations, further declines in defense and a moratorium on new programs--the deficit at mid-decade will still be about $250 billion and will be rising again. It will go up because the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, expected to increase $140 billion between 1992 and 1997, will go up faster than federal revenue.

Bush claims that he proposed a solution to the future deficit problem in his August review of the budget. His solution was “capping entitlements,” which sounds easy until you think about what it means.

The only entitlement programs that matter to the deficit are Medicare and Medicaid. Hence, capping entitlement programs means either slashing medical benefits for the poor and the elderly or folding these two programs into a new national system of controls on medical fees and charges.

The President has not made specific proposals for accomplishing his cap, since doing so would reveal how painful his “solution” would be. He is just blaming the Congress for not having solved a problem he is unwilling to face up to himself.

Congress, with all its faults, does not deserve this bum rap.