Editorial: GOP-led Congress has budget troubles

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1999 | 9:54 a.m.

The more the Republican-controlled Congress tries to find ways to balance the federal government's budget, the more damage it inflicts on itself. House GOP leaders are advocating across-the-board cuts for all federal agencies and that prompted President Clinton to denounce the scheme on Monday, noting that this would seriously harm deserving programs -- such as education and child nutrition -- while still preserving a congressional pay raise.

So Republican leaders beat a hasty retreat and announced this week that as part of their proposal, members of Congress would cut their pay raise. This ended that public relations disaster, but there is discord within their own ranks over the plan to cut all federal agency budgets by the same amount, a move which some believe could hurt worthy programs. These worries were heightened after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday that even a 1 percent cut, paring about $2.7 billion from the military budget, would have a "devastating" impact.

It is time for the Republican leadership to quit playing games and decide which individual programs should be preserved, recognizing their importance. A meat cleaver approach to budget cutting is overly simplistic and an abdication of Congress' responsibility to make the tough decisions that voters expect.

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