The Budget's Hidden Horrors

Monday, Jan. 18, 1988 By MARGOT HORNBLOWER
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Congress is notorious for tacking riders onto funding legislation, thus avoiding public hearings and committee debate. But 1986 and 1987 were the first years since 1950 in which not a single appropriations measure reached the President's desk. The result this time was the behemoth bill, passed helter-skelter nearly three months into the new fiscal year, that offered keen-eyed Congressmen irresistible opportunities for skulduggery.

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Budget experts attribute the mess partly to the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which set up a system of automatic cuts if total spending rises above deficit targets. "Gramm-Rudman now assures that everything will take place at the last second on the last day," says Democratic Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin. In fact, ten of the 13 appropriations bills had been ready to go to conference before Dec. 22. But congressional leaders delayed forwarding them to President Reagan for fear they would have no control over cuts once the bills were signed into law, should Gramm-Rudman take effect. They waited until a compromise over taxes and spending was hammered out between the Administration and Congress during four weeks of "budget summit" talks. The result, a $76 billion tax hike and spending-cut measure, whittled the deficit down to legal levels and passed both houses along with the huge funding bill.

In the final week, as members pressed to get home before Christmas, a feverish panic gripped Capitol Hill. It was a scene no civics textbook would dare describe. In back rooms, miniconferences worked nearly around the clock to reconcile differences between House and Senate versions of the budget. Millions of dollars were traded back and forth, sometimes with only two influential legislators in attendance. Hardly anyone knew what colleagues across the hall were doing. Exhaustion set in. "The typical day was 17 or 18 hours, while I was trying to make decisions on multi-hundred-million-dollar projects," said Senator Johnston, who presided at four conferences underway in different parts of the Capitol. "I have never wanted a recess so much in my life."

Congressman Obey held sway over two simultaneous conferences: one on foreign aid, where some 150 differences remained to be settled between Senate and House versions of the bill, and a second on labor and health that dealt with up to 400 matters in dispute. One of the items he agreed to was Inouye's pet project for the Sephardic Jews. "It was a lousy $8 million," explained Obey, who at the same time was negotiating with the Hawaiian over an $8 billion credit-refinancing item. Inouye said last week that he pushed for the money because the French government refused to fully fund the religious school.