Ehrlich on Washington column, June 19, 1995

NEWS FROM Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Second Congressional District of Maryland 1 407 York Road, Suite 304 315 Cannon House Office Building Lutherville, Maryland 21093 Washington, D.C. 205 1 5 EHRLICH ON WASHINGTON Week of June 19, 1995 By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. THE CLINTON BUDGET: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE Last week President Clinton unveiled his own balanced budget proposal. Sadly, it is five months late and hundreds of millions of dollars short. Don’t get me wrong. . .1 am pleased the President has shown a willingness to talk about serious deficit reduction. The budget which he submitted to Congress this past February was anything but serious. It preserved the practice of runaway deficit spending into the foreseeable future, swelling the national debt from $3.6 to $6.9 trillion in the process. The U. S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected it by a vote of 99-0. This latest budget is not much different than its predecessor. It heaps hundreds of millions of dollars more in debt onto future generations by proposing to eliminate the deficit in 10 years instead of the seven proposed under the Kasich budget proposal. It completely ignores the entitlement crisis and does not eliminate a single cabinet agency. It seeks to preserve, not dismantle, scores of wasteful big government spending programs. Regardless of its relative strengths or weaknesses, the Clinton budget comes so late in the process as to be largely irrelevant. Both the House and Senate have already passed their own budget plans. Before the House vote took place, Speaker Gingrich publicly invited the President to submit his own balanced budget plan, promising to bring the plan up for consideration by the House without amendments. Only after the train left the station did the President declare his