WASHINGTON – House Republicans are looking at delaying some federal spending, including money for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare and thousands of highway projects, to offset the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a leading GOP fiscal conservative said Sunday.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said there is a need for dramatic spending cuts in “big-ticket items.”
However, Democrats appearing on Sunday news programs questioned how President Bush can trim the budget to pay for Katrina recovery and support tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Where is he going to find roughly half a trillion dollars over the next several years for Iraq and for Katrina?” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., asked on “Late Edition” on CNN. “I think we’re not leveling with the American people.”
Raising taxes or not making permanent the president’s tax cuts is not the answer now, said Pence, head of the Republican Study Group, the spearhead group for the GOP’s most conservative members.
“We simply cannot break the bank of the federal budget,” Pence told ABC’s “This Week.”
“We simply can’t allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
The drug benefit program, set to begin Jan. 1, is expected to cost $40 billion a year. Last month President Bush signed a $286.4 billion highway bill that has been criticized for including about 6,000 projects added by lawmakers to benefit their districts and states.
Setting aside all of those additional highway projects and delaying the drug benefit by a year are expected to be among the proposals House Republicans are preparing this week, Pence said.
“We need to rebuild,” he said. “We can find the cuts in Washington, D.C., to do that, I really believe that.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said an across-the-board cut in spending, excluding defense spending, would be appropriate. He suggested lawmakers consider delaying the drug benefit and review the highway and energy bills passed this summer. The energy bill totaled $12.3 billion over 10 years.
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