As House Republicans prepared to pass their 2012 budget with a narrow margin of error, Democrats yesterday unveiled an alternative plan that takes three extra years to bring federal books into primary balance but offers billions of dollars more for energy and environmental programs.

The Democratic plan was overshadowed in the media by President Obama's high-profile pitch to trim $4 trillion in deficit spending while maintaining investments in clean energy (E&ENews PM, April 13). Yet its specific counterpoint to the House majority's budget, which GOP leaders have touted as a lodestar for fiscal hawks, may well prove a better guide for how the president's party approaches future battles over funding public health, research and other priorities.

House Democratic leaders linked arms with two freshmen members after a caucus meeting yesterday to lambaste the GOP budget as a victory for "the wealthy and oil companies," as Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) put it.

Sewell took further aim at House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's plan for "significantly cut[ting] research funding in science, health and other areas" as well as public transit.

The Wisconsin Republican's plan, expected to clear the House tomorrow before stalling in the Democratic-controlled Senate, does refer to increased support for "nuclear, wind, solar and more" low-carbon energy sources (Greenwire, April 5). But the GOP blueprint -- nonbinding but symbolically valuable, like its predecessors from both parties -- would leave little money for non-defense and non-research programs at the Energy Department, cutting its outlays to less than $1 billion within five years.

The House Democratic budget would cut outlays for energy and environmental efforts at DOE by more than 70 percent over the next five years but level off the long-term federal investment at more than $5 billion annually, equivalent to a fivefold increase over the GOP's plan.

The two budgets contrast similarly on natural resources and the environment, a category that includes U.S. EPA and the Interior Department. Ryan's budget would pare back outlays in that area by $10 billion within five years, while the Democratic alternative would exact smaller cuts and leave 2016 spending $11 billion higher than the GOP.

In addition, the alternative budget offered by Ryan's ranking member, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would set aside what is known as "deficit-neutral reserve funds" for proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions as well as for a national infrastructure bank aimed at speeding up an overhaul of the country's aging roads, rail and bridges.

The reserve funds are technical maneuvers that give lawmakers leeway to alter their spending allocations for sweeping legislative priorities so long as the overall deficit does not rise as a result.

Along party lines

Budget season tends to bring party-line votes for two competing plans, though the minority party does not always offer its own alternatives. In Democrats' case, their constant push to tar the GOP for opposing a rollback of fossil-fuel subsidies does not appear poised to rankle oil-patch members.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), a pivotal centrist swing vote during the 2009 climate change debate, said yesterday that even though oil companies are "being singled out," he could support the Democratic push to end tax benefits for the highly profitable industry.

"I know the oil industry is an easy target right now," Gonzalez said, "but I would agree with the basic premise of the Democratic budget -- to make sure that we don't have loopholes, don't have subsidies that don't work for all of America."

Meanwhile, Republicans were standing by the Ryan approach in the face of nationally televised criticism yesterday from Obama, who called the GOP's 2012 plan "deeply pessimistic" and a choice to invest in tax breaks as opposed to clean energy.

GOP leaders vowed to stand against any attempt to increase taxes, which both the Obama and House Democratic plans would do by letting the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for upper-income Americans expire next year.

"I know of no nation that has ever taxed its way into economic prosperity," House GOP Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) told reporters yesterday, adding: "[T]he deficit is the symptom. It is spending that is the disease."