In Senate, New Push on Taxes

January 25, 2013

The Wall Street Journal

Kristina Peterson

WASHINGTON—If House Republicans' aim this week was to draw contrasts with Democrats on deficit-cutting, they got their wish sooner than they expected.

Incoming Budget Committee Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray, a liberal Democrat from Washington state, told her colleagues Thursday that her first budget would call for additional revenue, drawn from changes to tax breaks that give an advantage to upper-income households.

"We could raise hundreds of billions of dollars by making sure the rich no longer benefit disproportionately from deductions and other tax preferences," she wrote in a memo to Senate Democrats.

And she said if discretionary spending—the programs whose funding Congress sets each year—must be cut, it should come equally from defense and other areas.

Ms. Murray's approach showed that she will guide her committee toward a budget with far different priorities than her conservative House counterpart, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). He said Wednesday his proposed budget would eliminate federal budget deficits within 10 years without raising revenue, meaning they would rely almost entirely on spending cuts.

House lawmakers voted Wednesday to extend the government's borrowing authority through May 18, but their bill also would require Senate Democrats to put a price tag on their policy choices by drawing up their first budget since 2009.

Ms. Murray assumes the panel's helm after years of increasingly direct engagement in the fiscal feuds that have come to dominate Congress. Following the bitter fight over raising the debt ceiling in 2011, Ms. Murray—a two-decade veteran of the Budget Committee—served as the Democratic co-chair of the supercommittee that battled for months over how to cut the federal deficit before calling it quits in November of that year. That led to the automatic cuts set to begin March 1.

Some criticized her appointment to help lead the supercommittee, since at the time she also was coordinating Democratic Senate campaigns for the 2012 election, a highly partisan role.

First elected in 1992 after campaigning as a "mom in tennis shoes," Ms. Murray staked out an early role defending social programs, including education and veterans' benefits. As the daughter of a World War II veteran diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 15, Ms. Murray with her family briefly relied on food stamps. Later, federal grants and student loans helped put her and six siblings through college.

"I know the support we got from our government was the difference between seven kids who might not have graduated from high school or college and the seven adults we've grown up to be today," she said in a July speech at the Brookings Institution. "So this is the primary prism I view our nation's budget through."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he was pleased Democrats would be drafting a budget, but was wary of its contents. "It's my hope that the Democrats' sudden interest in passing a budget isn't just another attempt to raise taxes," he said Thursday.

Republicans, frustrated with campaign attacks on their budget priorities, demanded the Senate produce a budget so Democrats would face similar exposure.

Traditionally Congress has sought to pass a budget through both chambers by April 15, laying out funding levels for appropriation committees to decide how to spend. But for the past two years, the agreement hammered out during the 2011 debt-ceiling debate has set overall spending levels.

Now, while lawmakers work on a budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, they also will have to contend with another set of fiscal challenges: the automatic spending cuts that go into effect on March 1 and the expiration of the government's current funding on March 27. Congressional leaders say they haven't started developing plans for avoiding the cuts or renewing the funding measure. Democrats say a budget could be used to resolve some of these other issues, making it a more important document than in years past.

Separately, White House officials are considering nominating Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. The nomination could come within days, a person familiar with the matter said. Ms. Burwell couldn't be reached for comment.

She was deputy OMB director during the Clinton administration, working alongside Jacob Lew, who is now President Barack Obama's Treasury nominee.

She has also worked closely with a number of other Obama administration officials who were also in the Clinton administration. Since leaving the Clinton administration, she has held a number of senior roles, including as president of the global development program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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