Political Wars Loom Over the Peace Dividend;First Casualty May Be Will to Cut Budget Deficit
A mad scramble is underway on Capitol Hill to grab a share of any "peace dividend" produced by defense spending cuts, and the political will to reduce the federal budget deficit may get trampled in the process.</br></br>The first official word of what the Bush administration thinks the dividend should be will come tomorrow, when the White House releases its fiscal 1991 budget. It is expected to be no more than $4 billion to $6 billion in the first year.</br></br>But the very idea of a peace dividend-plus an apparently exaggerated sense of how large it might be-has eroded the budget-cutting discipline on the Hill, lawmakers say.</br></br>Calls are being heard to use defense savings to pay for increased education and child care assistance, nuclear plant cleanups, highway construction and more. Other members of Congress want to deploy the peace dividend to cut taxes.</br></br>At the same time, some lawmakers have begun a rear-guard action to keep the impact of the military cutbacks from falling on their states and districts. Those fights could be so fierce, some congressional budget experts say, that the dividend may wind up being far too small to cover the deficit-increasing ideas it has spawned.