US Democrat Seeks Deficit Deal Balancing

A top House Democrat on budget issues, Chris Van Hollen,  has  said any deficit-cutting deal that is part of a U.S. debt-limit extension must be “balanced” to include higher tax revenue as well as spending reductions.

“You’ve got a lopsided approach” if “you’re just looking at the spending side and not talking about revenues,” Van Hollen said on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend, according to Bloomberg report.

In addition to his budget committee role, Van Hollen of Maryland is among a group of congressional leaders who will meet with Vice President Joe Biden starting May 5 to discuss ways to curb the long-term debt.

Van Hollen’s stance might cause friction with leaders of the Republican-controlled House, who rule out tax increases and demand deeper spending cuts as a condition for raising the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. The government will reach the borrowing limit as early as May 16.

Republicans’ deficit plan would retain “huge subsidies the big oil companies are getting” and provide “tax breaks to the folks on the very top” while ending “Medicare as we know it,” said Van Hollen.

A proposal by Tennessee Republican Bob Corker and Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill to cap spending at 20.6 percent of gross domestic product is “not a balanced approach” because it wouldn’t eliminate tax breaks, said Van Hollen.

President Barack Obama’s proposal for a “fail-safe” to trigger cuts in spending and tax breaks if Congress misses deficit-reduction targets “is the right approach,” said the Maryland Democrat.

Eliminating tax subsidies for oil drilling is “very much on the table,” particularly after House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio “indicated that he wanted to do something about it,” Van Hollen said.

With oil companies earning large profits, “nobody can argue that they need these taxpayer subsidies to motivate them to go and to drill for more oil,” Van Hollen said.

If there is “excessive speculation in the market,” Obama should “very seriously consider releasing some of the oil” from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he said.

That is “the only near-term thing you can do to pop the speculative bubble” driving up gasoline prices, he said. “The American people would get a pretty good price” for selling oil from the government’s strategic reserve, he said.

Van Hollen, 52, who is suing the Federal Election Commission to force more disclosure of political spending, said Obama is planning to order federal contractors to reveal their political donations. White House press secretary Jay Carney said April 20 that the administration was drafting such an order, while saying its content could change over time.

Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are “totally wrong” in saying a disclosure requirement would “chill freedom of speech,” Van Hollen said.

“This doesn’t prevent anybody from running any ad or saying whatever they want,” he said. “It simply says if you’re going to run that ad, tell the American people who’s funding it.”

When “there’s a big vote on the floor of the House on a big weapons system,” he said, why should defense contractors “be able to secretly fund the campaigns of people who voted in your favor, and secretly fund opponents to people who might have voted against you?”

Source : Thisday

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