http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/politics/03budget.html
Wonder how much more eager they'd be to work on a fiscally responsible budget if it wasn't an election year.
WASHINGTON, June 2 - They have tried sweet-talk and dire warnings, insults and bluffing tactics. None of it has worked, which is why a growing number of Republicans are beginning to despair about agreeing on a budget plan for next year.
Embarrassing as that would be for the party that controls both houses of Congress, many Republicans are concluding they would be better off with no budget plan than with one that would require them to pay the cost of permanently extending last year's tax cuts.
Senate Republican leaders, back from their Memorial Day recess, showed little sign on Wednesday of persuading a small band of rebels within their own party to drop their insistence on "pay as you go" rules.
The four Republican dissenters, joined by most Democrats, are demanding rules that would force Congress to pay the cost of any new tax cuts either with spending cuts or tax increases in other areas.
The impasse has already undermined President Bush's top domestic goal, which is to make the tax cuts permanent, and it will apparently postpone major budget decisions until after the elections.
It has also exposed a rift over Republican priorities: Is it more important to cut taxes or to prevent the budget deficit from expanding beyond its current level of about $400 billion?
The White House and House Republicans have staunchly opposed any such restrictions, because permanently extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts would cost about $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years.
On Tuesday, Senate Republican staff members floated a possible compromise: If the Republican hold-outs would accept a budget framework negotiated with the House, the Republican leaders would support a separate pay-as-you-go rule that would only apply to the Senate.
But that idea vanished before Republican leaders had even proposed it, apparently because some Senate Republicans viewed it as a capitulation to opponents of the tax cuts.
"I'm still working on a couple of ideas," said Senator Don Nickles, the Oklahoma Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. "I'm going to invest some more time in this - but not a lot."
And while some of the Republican holdouts said they were open to compromise, they were far from certain that one would be possible.
"It's closing the barn door after the cows are gone," said Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the most vocal holdouts, dismissing the proposed budget resolution with a thumbs-down sign.
In addition to Mr. McCain, the major Republican Senate holdouts are Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
"I hope we can come up with a compromise," Ms. Collins said. "But I feel very strongly that there needs to be real budget enforcement."
On Wednesday, two liberal policy research groups released a study estimating that the ultimate cost of the tax cuts would fall overwhelmingly on middle- and lower-income families.
According to the study, by the Tax Policy Center and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than three-quarters of all households would end up net losers if the government actually paid for the tax cuts by either spending cuts or other tax increases.
But the wealthiest one-fifth of families, who are by far the biggest beneficiaries of the tax cuts, would end up big winners.
"We should think of tax cuts as loans, not as grants, and in particular as loans that are not paid back by the same people who get them," said William G. Gale, a senior economist at the Tax Policy Center.
One Republican official said Congress could muddle through without a budget agreement. Democrats have already made it clear they will vote to extend at least temporarily three major tax cuts - an expansion of the child tax credit, a reduction in the so-called "marriage penalty" for two-income families and an expansion of the 10-percent tax bracket to cover more middle-income taxpayers.
Failing to adopt a budget resolution would make it harder to prevent lawmakers from adding pet spending projects. It would also mean that any tax-cut extensions would fall under the Senate's normal debating rules, which require at least 60 votes before debate can be ended.
But the biggest issue for Republicans may simply be the embarrassment of not being able to pass a basic budget plan even though they control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
"It's optics," said one Republican aide. "The issue is, can the Republicans do the most basic of things, which is to pass a budget?"
With elections just five months away, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to vote in favor of either tax increases or big budget cuts. But Democrats want to put obstacles in the way of future tax cuts while most Republicans simply want to leave the issue open until next year.
"It's true it would defer the decisions for a year, but at least it would get us through the year that we're in," said Senator Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania.
Wonder how much more eager they'd be to work on a fiscally responsible budget if it wasn't an election year.
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