Conrad: Two-week agreement is ‘acceptable’ for now, but work not done

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Sunday that a short-term budget proposal to avoid a government shutdown on March 4 is “clearly headed in the right direction,” but stressed that he wants a longer-term, comprehensive agreement.

The House Appropriations Committee on Friday unveiled a two-week
spending bill that
cuts $1.24 billion by terminating programs targeted for cuts in Obama’s
2012 budget request and finds the other $2.7 billion in savings by defunding earmarks.

“I think this two-week business is not the way to go,” Conrad said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think there should be a longer-term agreement.”

While calling the short-term agreement “acceptable,” he said “what is imporatnt is that we have a long-term comprehensive settlement with everything back on the table.”

He said he doesn’t believe in cutting items like “badly needed” highway spending as it could create jobs.

Conrad also leaned upon the longer-term vision laid out by the president’s debt commission, on which he served.

“Be modest at the beginning but do something big over the 10 years,” he said. “Don’t try to balance this on 12 percent of the budget. Be comprehensive.”