Appendix: Clinton's Feb. 6 Budget
The Budget Deal: A Conspiracy Of Celebration Yep, Congress and Clinton finally balanced the budget. But in their haste to hand out goodies, they missed a chance to defuse some time bombs. By Nancy Gibbs/TIME, 8/11/97
The Tax Bill: Money In Motion Why some of the "wealthy" have nothing to gain. By Daniel Kadlec/TIME, 8/11/97.
The Office Of Management and Budget
The Congressional Budget Office Gopher
Did Congress Approve Tax Measures Favoring The Well-Off? Iris J. Lav, associate director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities believes so, while J.D. Foster, executive director and chief economist for the Tax Foundation says the big winners are middle-class families.
Does The Budget Deal Address The Long-Term Entitlement Spending Crisis? -- John Tottie, Senior Economist with Citizens for a Sound Economy says the deal only worsens entitlement spending, while Brookings Institution Visiting Fellow Joseph White argues policymakers can't plan now for problems that are still 30 years off.
Is A Balanced Budget Amendment A Good Idea? Heritage Foundation senior fellow Daniel Mitchell takes on Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Balancing The Budget
Appendix: Clinton's Feb. 6 Budget
Required by law to submit a budget, Clinton sent Congress on Feb. 6 a $1.69 trillion plan for fiscal 1998 and a blueprint for balancing the budget by 2002. The document projected a small surplus by 2002, though nearly two-thirds of $388 billion in deficit savings were scheduled to occur in 2001 and 2002.
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Medicare Clinton's budget contained the growth of Medicare, the health care program for the aged, by $100 billion over five years, $138 billion over six years.
Medicaid -- Clinton's budget called for saving $22 billion by tying Medicaid's spending to the nation's per capita economic output before inflation. He also wanted $13 billion for other Medicaid services, however, resulting in net proposed savings of $9 billion.
Welfare -- Clinton proposed restoring $18 billion to welfare, mostly for benefits to legal immigrants and increased funding for food stamps. He included $3 billion in grants to states and municipalities for job training and about $400 million in tax incentives to employers that hire workers off the welfare rolls.
Defense -- $260 billion for defense for fiscal 1998, about $6 billion less than for this year.
Tax Cuts -- $98 billion in cuts over five years offset by $76 billion in hikes. Cuts included a $500 per child tax credit, tuition tax credits, a modest capital gains tax cut for the sale of a house, and expanded Individual Retirement Accounts. Hikes included a 10 percent airline ticket tax and new taxes on businesses. Taken together, the net tax cut was closer to $22 billion.
Education -- $51 billion in new spending for school infrastructure, expanded tax credits for college, a literacy campaign, an expansion of Head Start, an expansion of so-called Pell grants (or scholarships for needy college students), a big funding increase for so-called charter schools and seed money for schools to invest in technology, including computers. (See Taxes, above, for Clinton's education tax credit).
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