WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans are claiming victory, the White House and congressional Democrats likewise, but the economy may be the biggest winner of a year-end budget agreement expected to pass both houses by comfortable margins.
Under the deal, an estimated $131 billion in Social Security tax revenue will not be spent -- either on GOP tax cuts or administration spending priorities -- and will therefore go toward debt reduction.That makes it a beneficial byproduct of congressional inaction. "The citizenry is safe because gridlock prevailed," says Robert Reischauer, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, now at the Brookings Institution.
The House passed the budget bill 296-135 Thursday, and the Senate is expected to follow suit, possibly by the end of the week.
But in a further irony, both political parties seek credit for the fruits of their stalemate.
Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle told reporters Thursday that Republicans had passed an $800 million tax cut earlier in the year, "generated in large measure to benefit the wealthiest of Americans." That was defeated -- vetoed by Clinton, actually -- and Daschle said that "as a result that it was defeated," the debt will be reduced.
Republicans offered a different evaluation.
"The president had a plan. ... He was going to save 60 percent" of the Social Security surplus for debt reduction, said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "That meant we would have spent 40 percent. ... The president came around."
There's near universal agreement that debt retirement will have a positive effect on the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress this year that running a surplus and reducing the national debt would be "far superior" to either tax cuts or spending increases.
Reischauer agrees. "It's good for the economy because when the government runs a surplus it adds to national saving, which provides more funds for the private sector to invest in plant and equipment and research and development," he said. That leads to increased "productivity and growth rate," he said.
Debt retirement is also popular with the public, according to opinion polls, although its staying power as an election issue is uncertain.
That may explain why most politicians touch lightly on the issue, then turn quickly to others.
"The first budget of the 21st century puts education first, as it should," Clinton said in embracing the spending agreement. "That's why I stood firm for our commitment to hire 100,000 highly qualified teachers to lower class size."
In remarks to reporters in Turkey, Clinton listed other priorities that had been met: money for hiring up to 50,000 additional police officers, protecting the environment and meeting international obligations among them.
"This bill is an overall victory for our priorities," said Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., who coupled his vote in favor of the measure with a year-end blast at the "obstructionism that has become the trademark of this Republican Congress."
Daschle told his own rank and file that Democrats had won a $20 billion increase in their priorities from the budget deal of a year ago.
Republicans say education is a priority of theirs, too, and in his own remarks on the House floor, Hastert noted that Republicans had voted $300 million more in schools than the administration had asked for.
In the final hours of bargaining, they also won Clinton's agreement to an across-the-board cut, an important political priority of the conservatives who came to Congress five years ago promising to eliminate waste in government spending.
The GOP claimed as its accomplishment that they had funded the government without dipping into the Social Security surplus. The leadership had created a political fault line out of the issue, running television commercials on the subject to the annoyance of Democrats. They also used it skillfully to keep wavering conservatives in line despite spending that far exceeded the spending restrictions in the 2-year-old balanced budget agreement.
Before the House approved the bill, Majority Leader Dick Armey said passage would mean "we will have destroyed the raid on Social Security forever."
There's dispute about whether they stopped it for this year, much less all those to come.
But as agreement between the White House and Republicans drew close, Gephardt and Daschle began to de-emphasize their earlier claim that the GOP was breaking its pledge.
Now, they say, it will be next spring at the earlier before the truth is known.
If it turns out the Clinton-Republican budget spends too much, and does invade the Social Security, it will be the focus of one of the early struggles when Congress convenes next spring.