| Politico | - |
To
understand the shutdown crisis in Washington, go back to the House
Republican balanced budget plan last spring. To placate the right,
promises were made then that could not be kept, and with a new fiscal
year beginning Tuesday, GOP leaders are ...
Shutdown crisis rooted in GOP’s budget
To understand the shutdown crisis in Washington, go back to the House Republican balanced budget plan last spring.
To placate the right, promises were made then that could not be kept, and with a new fiscal year beginning Tuesday, GOP leaders are running out of running room. President Barack Obama may very well be in denial about the federal debt, as Republicans suggest. But Speaker John Boehner and his deputies have a credibility deficit of their own.
Continue Reading
Back in March, that resolution held out the promise of repealing Obamacare but only got to balance by keeping hundreds of billions in added revenues and Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act. It promised to protect defense spending while living with the post-sequestration caps of $967 billion set in the Budget Control Act. But to deliver on this pledge, it required such large cuts from domestic spending bills that the whole appropriations process collapsed by mid-summer.
A popular $44.1 billion transportation and housing bill had to be pulled from the House floor in late July. Of the eight, annual appropriations bills which are most truly non-defense spending, none made it through the House this year.
The logical place for the Obamacare fight now should have been on the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services this past summer. But that bill was never even marked up in the House because of the level of domestic cuts demanded in March.
(PHOTOS: Leaders arrive for the budget battle)
Instead the fight is now on a CR which sets funding at an annual rate of $986.7 billion — or about $20 billion above what the GOP proposed for fiscal 2014. Why? Because if the CR really strictly matched the post-sequester allocation of funds under the BCA for 2014, the Pentagon would have to cut roughly $44 billion from the $512.5 billion level approved by the House in late July.
That’s an immense drop which many Republicans would find hard to accept even on a two to three month basis. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages has been tearing into old conservative allies for ignoring the CR’s higher spending. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted with Democrats for a blanket waiver on all budget points of order against the CR Friday — in part because he feared the risk to defense.
(PHOTOS: 17 times the government has shut down)
McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republican, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, spelled it out best in a candid moment during the July debate on the House’s Pentagon budget.
“Some will complain that the bill breaks the cap placed on defense spending under the sequester level for fiscal 2014 put into place by the Budget Control Act,” Rogers said. “To this I say of course it does.”
“If nothing is done to cancel the next round of sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect when this Congress adjourns, this bill would be cut to a total of $468 billion.”
As the House Budget Committee chairman and his party’s go-to numbers man, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) bears a big responsibility here.
He is too smart not to have seen the holes in his budget plan. And once the Senate followed with its own resolution, he failed to follow up by aggressively pursuing a conference with Democrats.
The lure was always to push Obama back against a debt ceiling backstop. But the sort of entitlement reforms and long-term savings that Republicans want are far better dealt with in a budget reconciliation bill. Now after blocking the Senate from going to conference, the GOP is left with two time sensitive vehicles — a CR and debt ceiling bill — to try to effect change.
“We bitched and moaned about the Senate not doing a budget. Then they did and we didn’t go to conference,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told POLITICO off the House floor Saturday. “You need a big plan, Democrats and Republicans in the same room. We should have gone to conference.”
Boehner joked Saturday of being the “happy warrior,” but the Ohio Republican has paid a heavy price.
He is a proven legislator, a former House committee chairman, and there’s no evidence that anyone else in the current leadership could do a better job with the divisions in his conference.
To placate the right, promises were made then that could not be kept, and with a new fiscal year beginning Tuesday, GOP leaders are running out of running room. President Barack Obama may very well be in denial about the federal debt, as Republicans suggest. But Speaker John Boehner and his deputies have a credibility deficit of their own.
Continue Reading
Indeed the supreme irony is the health care fight now
is being resurrected on a continuing resolution or CR that is at odds
itself with GOP plan six months ago.
(Government shutdown full coverage)Back in March, that resolution held out the promise of repealing Obamacare but only got to balance by keeping hundreds of billions in added revenues and Medicare savings in the Affordable Care Act. It promised to protect defense spending while living with the post-sequestration caps of $967 billion set in the Budget Control Act. But to deliver on this pledge, it required such large cuts from domestic spending bills that the whole appropriations process collapsed by mid-summer.
A popular $44.1 billion transportation and housing bill had to be pulled from the House floor in late July. Of the eight, annual appropriations bills which are most truly non-defense spending, none made it through the House this year.
The logical place for the Obamacare fight now should have been on the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services this past summer. But that bill was never even marked up in the House because of the level of domestic cuts demanded in March.
(PHOTOS: Leaders arrive for the budget battle)
Instead the fight is now on a CR which sets funding at an annual rate of $986.7 billion — or about $20 billion above what the GOP proposed for fiscal 2014. Why? Because if the CR really strictly matched the post-sequester allocation of funds under the BCA for 2014, the Pentagon would have to cut roughly $44 billion from the $512.5 billion level approved by the House in late July.
That’s an immense drop which many Republicans would find hard to accept even on a two to three month basis. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages has been tearing into old conservative allies for ignoring the CR’s higher spending. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted with Democrats for a blanket waiver on all budget points of order against the CR Friday — in part because he feared the risk to defense.
(PHOTOS: 17 times the government has shut down)
McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republican, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, spelled it out best in a candid moment during the July debate on the House’s Pentagon budget.
“Some will complain that the bill breaks the cap placed on defense spending under the sequester level for fiscal 2014 put into place by the Budget Control Act,” Rogers said. “To this I say of course it does.”
“If nothing is done to cancel the next round of sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect when this Congress adjourns, this bill would be cut to a total of $468 billion.”
As the House Budget Committee chairman and his party’s go-to numbers man, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) bears a big responsibility here.
He is too smart not to have seen the holes in his budget plan. And once the Senate followed with its own resolution, he failed to follow up by aggressively pursuing a conference with Democrats.
The lure was always to push Obama back against a debt ceiling backstop. But the sort of entitlement reforms and long-term savings that Republicans want are far better dealt with in a budget reconciliation bill. Now after blocking the Senate from going to conference, the GOP is left with two time sensitive vehicles — a CR and debt ceiling bill — to try to effect change.
“We bitched and moaned about the Senate not doing a budget. Then they did and we didn’t go to conference,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told POLITICO off the House floor Saturday. “You need a big plan, Democrats and Republicans in the same room. We should have gone to conference.”
Boehner joked Saturday of being the “happy warrior,” but the Ohio Republican has paid a heavy price.
He is a proven legislator, a former House committee chairman, and there’s no evidence that anyone else in the current leadership could do a better job with the divisions in his conference.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/government-shutdown-gop-budget-97504.html#ixzz2gE0Apx6e
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