The Continuing, Continuing Resolution
While the budgeters tried to salvage reconciliation, the real battle was on the CR. No appropriation had passed the Senate because no one knew what the sequester or its equivalent would look like. The drift of the 1980s then reached its logical conclusion—a CR for everything.
The skirmishing began with the usual "I'll not be moved so you will have to change your position" statements. The president "laid down a line in the sand," insisting that he had to have more for defense and foreign aid and less for domestic programs before he would sign the $520 billion omnibus bill reported by House Appropriations.[35] A trial balloon launched by Rostenkowski on behalf of a new gas tax (presumably on the reconciliation) was quickly shot down as House Democrats decided not to mention a tax increase unless the Republican Senate first initiated it.[36]
Still, any action on the reconciliation would take some pressure off the CR. House, Senate, and OMB negotiators tentatively agreed on a package of (over)estimated asset sales of around $7 billion, especially in rural housing and development loans; $4 billion plus in revenues, more than half supposedly from increased tax enforcement; a billion or so from a variety of user fees; and a third of a billion from increasing the charges on banks to obtain Federal Deposit Insurance. A final $1.5 billion would be raised by accelerating excise tax collections due in fiscal 1988 and moving back the last payment for general revenue sharing so that it applied to the FY86 budget, which was about over.[37] Not much to be proud of in these accounting gimmicks. "Given the choices, which are none," Representative Mike Lowery, a Democratic member of the House Budget Committee, said plaintively, "it's better to do this, given the ridiculous situation we are in." Lowery's comments were kinder than most. Senator Armstrong called it "a package of golden gimmicks." Senator Exon (D-Neb.) described the measure as "perverted, phony, unrealistic." Marvin Leath, member of the House Budget Committee, declared that "we're about to pull the ultimate scam and everybody's included."[38] Nevertheless, the House added a few new wrinkles,[39] voting 309 to 106 on September 24 to approve an estimated $15.1 billion in deficit reduction.
The next day by the narrowest of margins (one vote) the House passed what conservative Republicans called its BOMB (Bloated Omnibus
Money Bill) of $562 billion, containing all thirteen regular appropriation acts. Among the reasons for negative votes were inclusion of aid to the Contras in Nicaragua and exclusion of money to revive revenue sharing. A presidential veto was threatened not only on the old grounds of too little for defense and too much for domestic programs but on a new one—that arms control provisions, including a moratorium on nuclear tests, did not belong there.[40]
In Iceland for a meeting with Soviet party chief Gorbachev, President Reagan on October 11 had to sign the third stop-gap spending bill in ten days. Congressional leaders feared a mass exodus after October 14 when the election would be just three weeks away. With various bills still in conferences, including reconciliation-cum-debt reduction, debt ceiling, and omnibus appropriations, the last-minute jitters again were afflicting Washington.[41] The budget shuffle gave way to the adjournment stagger.
A few hours after a conference agreement on October 15, the House voted a $576 billion omnibus appropriation continuing resolution. Despite reducing $28 billion from his defense request and reiterating veto threats, President Reagan—seeking to preserve a hard-won $ 100 million in Contra aid and compromises on many other issues—urged House Republicans to support the CR. Nevertheless, still talking veto, the president wanted the Senate to strip two provisions from the House bill.[42]
Aside from the particular items in which they were most interested, few representatives or senators or their staff members claimed to grasp what was in the 1,200-page CR, let alone the language from other appropriations bills and unrelated legislation it incorporated.[43] Nonetheless, the Senate preliminarily approved the omnibus appropriations bill on October 17. By a voice vote, the Senate stripped from the House version a construction trades amendment that would have given unions more leverage over employers. Still in dispute was a House effort to enforce at least a 50 percent "Buy American" provision regarding offshore oil rigs. Then the Senate got hung up in a classic pork-barrel maneuver by Alphonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.), who was up for reelection. An angry Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) engineered a 69 to 21 vote against D'Amato's effort to add $151 million for continued production, on Long Island, of the T-46 jet trainer, which the Air Force did not want.
The Senate passed the CR, and Congress adjourned to campaign. On October 17, the minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee issued a "Fiscal Year 1987 Budget Wrap-up." It began by explaining that, while the deficit was "estimated at about $151 billion … more realistic budget estimates show the FY87 budget deficit is likely to end up at about $180–190 billion." Out of $31 billion in supposed deficit reductions, they
claimed, only $6 billion were real policy changes. "Ever hear that song, 'Help Me Make It Through the Night'?" Bill Gray asked. "That's what we're doing here."[44]