Congress dodges one crisis, now on to the next

DONNA CASSATA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — One cri­sis averted, on to the next. The day after Con­gress man­aged to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down — again — Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats stared ahead Tues­day at major fights over spend­ing that under­score a deep divide that’s sure to define the fast-approaching national elections.

Mon­day night, law­mak­ers had post­poned their dis­pute over whether bil­lions for dis­as­ter aid must be paid for with cuts else­where in the bud­get, finess­ing a pact to keep the gov­ern­ment operating.

But tea party-driven Repub­li­cans are still insist­ing on sig­nif­i­cant spend­ing cuts this fall, with some argu­ing that a hard-fought con­gres­sional agree­ment this sum­mer to fund the gov­ern­ment at $1.043 tril­lion in 2012 was too gen­er­ous. Democ­rats, many of whom com­plained of too many con­ces­sions and reduc­tions in this year’s show­downs, are furi­ously try­ing to pro­tect gov­ern­ment programs.

The next skir­mish will be over how and where to spend the new year’s bud­get, with a Nov. 18 dead­line for that leg­is­la­tion. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s $447 bil­lion jobs pro­posal that would cut pay­roll taxes and increase spend­ing on school con­struc­tion and other infra­struc­ture has already divided the par­ties. But the next really big deal is the spe­cial 12-member bipar­ti­san super­com­mit­tee and whether it can come up with a plan to slash $1.5 tril­lion over 10 years by Nov. 23 — the day before Thanksgiving.

These fights will unfold against the back­drop of a fee­ble econ­omy that Obama is des­per­ate to jump-start as he pushes for a sec­ond term, and an exas­per­ated elec­torate that looks at Wash­ing­ton and dis­likes what it sees.

“The heat will be on, the heat from the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” said for­mer Repub­li­can Sen. Alan Simp­son, who believes Amer­i­cans strug­gling eco­nom­i­cally will be ask­ing, “Why stretch us out like this?”

Law­mak­ers also will be under pres­sure from polit­i­cal fac­tions demand­ing that they stand firm for party beliefs.

“You have to sup­port get­ting con­trol of exces­sive spend­ing and debt,” said Sal Russo, a long­time Repub­li­can oper­a­tive and founder of the Tea Party Express, a well-funded wing of the pop­ulist move­ment. “Are you help­ing to solve the prob­lem or mak­ing it worse?”

Shortly after Sen­ate votes on Mon­day, Sen. Mary Lan­drieu, D-La., thanked party lead­ers “for help­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic Party find the back­bone it needed to fight and win this debate.”

The dis­as­ter aid dis­pute that threat­ened to par­tially shut down the gov­ern­ment this week­end was resolved rel­a­tively quickly after a stand­off between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans. The fight, how­ever, was an unpleas­ant reminder to most Amer­i­cans of the last-minute maneu­ver­ing in April to avert a shut­down and the August show­down over rais­ing the nation’s bor­row­ing author­ity that left finan­cial mar­kets unnerved.

This time, Democ­rats had spent weeks demand­ing addi­tional dis­as­ter aid in response to hur­ri­canes, tor­na­does and other nat­ural dis­as­ters that had bat­tered Amer­i­cans from Ver­mont to Mis­souri. Repub­li­cans had said the addi­tional aid had to be off­set by cuts in energy-related pro­grams that Democ­rats favored. The Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency had warned that its accounts would be out of money early this week.

A solu­tion to keep the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing seemed uncer­tain last week. Then word from the Obama admin­is­tra­tion that FEMA wasn’t in as dire finan­cial straits as many feared proved to be the answer.

On Sat­ur­day, the admin­is­tra­tion told Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that FEMA could last until Thurs­day with the money it had. Specif­i­cally, an unknown con­trac­tor had come in under bud­get, free­ing some $40 mil­lion, said Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can con­gres­sional aides.

On Sun­day morn­ing, Reid reached out to House Speaker John Boehner’s staff, informed them of the more promis­ing finan­cial out­look for FEMA and pro­posed two bare-bones emer­gency spend­ing bills, one to keep the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing for a week and another until Nov. 18. Boehner’s office con­tacted Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Mitch McConnell with the lat­est devel­op­ments and proposal.

McConnell’s office made a quick check with the Sen­ate Repub­li­can vote counter, Jon Kyl of Ari­zona, on whether such a plan would fly with the GOP.

FEMA was still say­ing Thurs­day, pos­si­bly Fri­day, before the money ran out, but a way out had emerged. Within hours on Mon­day, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans had agreed on an emer­gency spend­ing bill to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down. FEMA would get $2.65 bil­lion in dis­as­ter relief assis­tance in a one-week bill, $1 bil­lion less than approved by tea party Republicans.

Chris Krueger, a polit­i­cal ana­lyst for the bro­ker­age firm MF Global, said, “Both sides are con­vinced this con­tin­ued threat of gov­ern­ment shut­down ben­e­fits no incumbents.”

The House, on recess this week, prob­a­bly will back the one-week mea­sure by voice vote Thurs­day and vote sep­a­rately next week to keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning through Nov. 18.

“The per­ils of Pauline,” said John Fee­hery, a Repub­li­can polit­i­cal con­sul­tant and for­mer con­gres­sional aide. “Every new episode has a new cliffhanger.”

In a let­ter dated Sept. 26, Jacob Lew, direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, wrote con­gres­sional lead­ers that as FEMA approached the last five days of the fis­cal year this week, “it appears that weather sys­tems form­ing off our shores will not sig­nif­i­cantly affect the United States. That, in com­bi­na­tion with FEMA’s rig­or­ous cash man­age­ment mech­a­nism, means” the agency could oper­ate for much of the week.

Con­gress may have a harder time weath­er­ing the storms of bud­get show­downs, a real­ity that law­mak­ers acknowledged.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Sen­ate Demo­c­rat, said he trav­eled through his home state of Illi­nois this past week­end and when Amer­i­cans “see us break down into another cussing match over shut­ting down the gov­ern­ment, they say ‘for good­ness sake, grow up, group up and accept your responsibility.”

McConnell, R-Ky., said the “entire fire-drill was com­pletely unnecessary.”

With some 80 per­cent of Amer­i­cans dis­ap­prov­ing of Con­gress, a remark­able num­ber for a major gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion, out­siders see few winners.

“They don’t really real­ize they are play­ing Russ­ian roulette,” said Robert E. Den­ton Jr., head of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment at Vir­ginia Tech.

Posted by AP News on Sep 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.