At the top of a partial list of the potential cuts being circulated Tuesday were previously suggested ideas like delaying the start of the new Medicare prescription drug coverage for one year to save $31 billion and eliminating $25 billion in home-state projects from the newly enacted transportation measure.
The list also proposed eliminating the Moon-Mars initiative that NASA announced Monday, for $44 billion in savings; ending support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $4 billion; cutting taxpayer payments for the national political conventions and the presidential election campaign fund, $600 million; and charging federal employees for parking, $1.54 billion.
''What House conservatives will demonstrate through Operation Offset is that there is more than enough room in the federal budget to provide for the needs of the families affected by Katrina without raising taxes,'' said a House Republican aide who is working with lawmakers on the proposals and who insisted on anonymity because the package would not be made public until today.
The suggestions are certain to draw serious opposition from other lawmakers who consider those programs essential, illustrating the difficulty faced by the majority Republicans in finding acceptable ways to offset the hurricane costs.
Before the list was made public, Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, declared that delaying the Medicare plan was a nonstarter. DeLay also expressed skepticism that most lawmakers would want to revisit the transportation bill, saying he would be reluctant to sacrifice the projects that he won for his district in the Houston area.
''My earmarks are pretty important to building an economy in that region,'' DeLay said of the local projects he backed in the bill. A watchdog group said those items totaled more than $114 million.
DeLay said Republicans would press ahead this year with their planned tax cuts, though Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told a trade association on Tuesday that some tax measures might have to be delayed, including a repeal of the estate tax and the effort to make permanent some cuts instituted earlier in the Bush administration.
