Budget Bill Heads to Obama
Politico reports:
The landmark spending bill approved by Congress on Thursday is a first step toward reversing years of steady growth in domestic appropriations and sets the stage for still more difficult budget fights this spring that will sorely test the same bipartisan coalition.
House passage was secured only when Democrats crossed the aisle to rescue Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) from defeat after scores of defections on his right. Hours later, the Senate acted with far less suspense but again on a bipartisan 81-19 roll call.
Repeating this level of cooperation will be the great challenge of the coming months.
The same Democrats who helped Boehner on Thursday won’t be back Friday to support the wholesale changes to Medicare and Medicaid envisioned in the Republican budget resolution. And it can’t be forgotten that Thursday’s votes came about only after lawmakers were chastened last week by walking to the precipice of an unprecedented wartime shutdown of the government.
That said, new crises abound. “We must build on this bipartisan compromise to tackle these issues,” a White House spokesman said after the bill’s passage. Indeed, the Treasury Department will soon exhaust its borrowing authority, requiring Congress to raise the federal debt ceiling or risk default. And if no agreement can be reached on the new budget resolution, the tortured saga of 2011 appropriations could very well be repeated.
As it is, six months into the fiscal year, the 451-page bill puts Cabinet departments and agencies on permanent footing, but at a spending level nearly $38 billion below what it was when the new Congress began in January. Nondefense spending is hardest hit, with a reduction closer to $42 billion, and the new appropriations target — just shy of $1.0498 trillion — is $78.5 billion less than President Barack Obama’s initial 2011 budget requests from a year ago.
State and local governments may feel the pinch most, and from Environmental Protection Agency sewer and water grants to community development block grants and Department of Homeland Security aid for local responders, billions of dollars will no longer flow from Washington.
“Never before have we cut our appropriated funding so drastically,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniele Inouye (D-Hawaii). “By far and away, this is the largest one-year cut from the president’s budget request in the nation’s history.”
Obama and Boehner — together with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — struck the deal last Friday. But down to the end, Boehner’s unique role as both speaker and party leader was pivotal as he seemed to swing between embracing Democratic votes and his more partisan goal of keeping a GOP-dominant fight with as few defections as possible.
