WASHINGTON -- With the federal budget deficit expanding and congressional elections seven months away, President Donald Trump's administration plans to ask Congress for cuts in domestic programs that were part of a bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending bill that Trump signed last month.
The White House doesn't want to touch extra funding for the military, border security and combating the opioids crisis in a package of proposed cuts it will send to Congress in the coming weeks, according to an administration official, who asked for anonymity to outline the plan. Late Monday, several Senate Republicans came out against the idea.
This comes as a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has found that the combined effect of Trump's tax cuts and the spending bill is sending the government's budget deficit toward the $1 trillion mark next year.
The federal budget deficit is on track to hit $804 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 from a projected $563 billion shortfall forecast in June, according to the new report. The forecast said the deficit will expand to $1 trillion in 2020, two years earlier than previously forecast.
The report says economic growth from the tax cuts will add 0.7 percent on average to the nation's economic output over the coming decade. Those effects will only partially offset the deficit cost of the tax cuts. The administration had promised the cuts would pay for themselves.
Instead, Monday's report estimates that the GOP tax bill, which is Republican-controlled Washington's signature accomplishment under Trump, will add $1.8 trillion to the deficit over the coming decade, even after its positive effects on the economy are factored in.
The report paints an unrelentingly bleak picture of federal deficits, which would permanently breach the $1 trillion mark in 2020 unless Congress stems the burst of red ink. The government would borrow about 19 cents of every dollar it spends this year. Deficits would grow to $1.5 trillion by 2028 -- and could exceed $2 trillion if the tax cuts are fully extended and if Washington doesn't cut spending.
"Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences for the budget and the nation," said Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall. "In particular, the likelihood of a fiscal crisis in the United States would increase."
The widening gap takes away one of the main lines of attack Republicans have used against Democrats in recent years -- runaway federal spending -- as they are trying to fend off a strong challenge to their control of the House in the November elections. Feeling the pressure, House Republicans will vote Thursday on a balanced budget amendment, a largely symbolic gesture that has essentially no chance of passing, since it requires a two-thirds vote and is being rushed to a vote without hearings or committee debate.
"The CBO's latest report exposes the scam behind the rosy rhetoric from Republicans that their tax bill would pay for itself," said top Senate Democrat Charles Schumer of New York. "The American people deserve a Congress that is focused squarely on helping the middle class, not patronizing Kabuki theatre -- like sham 'balanced budget' votes -- from Republicans who blew up the deficit to benefit wealthy special interests."
"Without question, we have challenging work ahead," said House Budget Committee Chairman Steve Womack, R-Ark., who promised he will be "working with my colleagues in the days ahead to craft a responsible budget plan."
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California has been working with the White House on using a budget maneuver called rescission, a Republican aide said. The size of the cuts that might be sought and a timetable for a Congressional vote hasn't been decided.
"The administration is working to identify potential rescissions, and at this point there is no completed list or dollar amount," White House budget office spokesman Meghan Burris said.
Any attempt to roll back spending is likely to trigger a backlash from Democrats who negotiated the extra domestic funding in exchange for agreeing to a bigger budget for the Pentagon. Although Democrats wouldn't be able to block it, some Republicans may be reluctant to blow up one of the few bipartisan agreements that have made it through the House and Senate.
The spending bill passed the House on a 256-167 vote and the Senate on a 65-32 vote last month, the result of more than a month of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in Congress to end a cycle of government shutdown threats and stopgap spending bills.
"It probably would be a tough vote over here," with the GOP's slim 51-49 majority, third-ranking Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota told reporters.
"It would depend a lot on what's in it," Thune said. "But I think there are a lot of our members who feel like we've litigated these issues over the last couple of years, we came up with budget numbers and everyone agreed to them."
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters the idea was "ill-advised" and would make negotiating next year's appropriations "very difficult."
Asked Monday if appropriators were throwing cold water on the notion of pursuing rescissions, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said, "Well, this one is."
Opposition from Collins and Murkowski -- as well as the indefinite absence of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- would mean that Republicans would be unable to muscle through a rescission bill on their own.
Information for this article was contributed by Erik Wasson, Justin Sink, Anna Edgerton, Laura Litvan and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News; by Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; and by Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post.
A Section on 04/10/2018