Devious Tactics: As Lawmakers Devise Ways to Trim Deficit, Backdoor Projects Rise --- Pressures for Added Services Cause Congress to Sneak Plans Around the Budget --- Shifting Loads of Employers
WASHINGTON -- Many are hoping that the impending deficit-reduction package will strike a blow for cutting the size of government or at least checking its growth.</br></br>What the deficit-reduction agreement is all about, says Democratic Rep. Butler Derrick of South Carolina, "is to make government not as large and cumbersome, and to cut back on it."</br></br>But even as lawmakers and the administration work out a package they say will reduce the budget deficit by about $30 billion in the current fiscal year, they are expanding the role of government in less visible ways. They are doing this through "backdoor" spending that doesn't show up in the budget but will eventually increase government outlays, and through increased regulation and other steps that shift some of the burdens of government onto the private sector.</br></br>"There's a demand both for more deficit cutting and for expanding government services," says Rep. Charles Schumer of New York, a member of the House Budget Committee.</br></br>The upshot of this ambivalence in public opinion, says Rep. Tony Coelho of California, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, is that "you're going to find Congress being more and more creative, doing more things that aren't budgetary items."