Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 30, 1993 TAG: 9307300134
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The negotiators settled on the modest gasoline tax increase included in the Senate version of the bill and refused to move any closer to the much larger "Btu" energy tax proposed by Clinton and adopted in the House bill.
The gas tax would raise $23 billion over five years, compared to $72 billion in energy tax increases in the House bill.
A compromise cooked up by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowksi, D-Ill., to raise the gas tax by 6.5 cents per gallon was scrapped after Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Herbert H. Kohl, D-Wis., threatened to vote against the entire package.
Kohl's warning, in a conversation with Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, proved to be the turning point in the negotiations. "I'm concerned about middle-class taxes," Kohl said. "I don't think we should tax the middle class."
Rostenkowski and Moynihan had sought the higher gas tax to help pay for tax incentives and social welfare provisions favored by moderate and liberal Democrats in the House and Senate.
The "Byrd rule" also emerged as a sticking point Thursday among negotiators dealing with other sections of the budget package. The rule is aimed at excluding from reconciliation bills "extraneous" provisions that do not have a direct impact on deficit reduction.
One provision facing Byrd rule problems was a House measure designed to give federal workers a pay boost next year, even though the administration had proposed delaying a new pay formula that linked federal salaries to wages paid comparable private-sector workers in local markets.
The Senate bill did not address the pay issue, and stripping it out would likely cause a new round of negotiations with the administration over how to preserve its 1994 federal pay freeze while also providing spending for the separate, multiyear pay formula.
House and Senate negotiators spent much of the day spinning their wheels over the energy tax dispute. Moynihan announced the agreement on a 4.3 cents a gallon tax increase Thursday evening and said the final details would be worked out by this afternoon.
House Democrats, who argued that a larger gas tax is essential to closing the deal, had grown impatient and wary of the side show in the Senate, where Democrats seem to be going out of their way to dream up new concerns and demands. "Everyone's leveraging over there," groused an aide to the House Democratic leadership.
by CNB