House votes to prevent government shutdown

ANDREW TAYLOR

DAVID ESPO

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Repub­li­cans pushed leg­is­la­tion through the House on Wednes­day to pre­vent a gov­ern­ment shut­down this month while eas­ing the short-term impact of $85 bil­lion in spend­ing cuts — at the same time pre­view­ing a longer-term plan to erase fed­eral deficits with­out rais­ing taxes.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama pur­sued a dif­fer­ent path as the GOP asserted its bud­get pri­or­i­ties. He hosted a din­ner with a dozen Repub­li­can sen­a­tors at a hotel near the White House in search of bipar­ti­san sup­port for a deficit-cutting approach that includes the higher taxes he seeks as well as sav­ings from Medicare and other ben­e­fit pro­grams that they stress. The Repub­li­can lead­ers of the House and Sen­ate did not participate.

Any such com­pro­mise talks were unlikely to yield fruit for months, if then, although Wis­con­sin Rep. Paul Ryan, the author of the House Repub­li­can bud­get plan, expressed hope that some progress across party lines might be pos­si­ble later in the year.

“I think this whole thing will come to a crescendo this sum­mer, and we’re going to have to talk to each other to get an agree­ment about how to delay a debt cri­sis, how to save this coun­try from a fis­cal train wreck that’s com­ing,” said Ryan, who was the Repub­li­cans’ vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date last year. He added that he had spo­ken with Obama in recent days, but he declined to pro­vide details.

For now, the divided government’s imme­di­ate objec­tives are to pre­vent a shut­down of fed­eral agen­cies on March 27, at the same time law­mak­ers and the White House look for ways to ease the impact of across-the-board spend­ing cuts that kicked in less than a week ago.

The leg­is­la­tion that cleared the House on a bipar­ti­san vote of 267–151 would do both, ensur­ing fund­ing through the Sept. 30 end of the bud­get year while grant­ing the Pen­ta­gon and the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs greater flex­i­bil­ity in imple­ment­ing their share of short-term spend­ing cuts.

“This is all about whether or not we shut down the gov­ern­ment. This is a bill to keep the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, the Ken­tucky Repub­li­can who chairs the House Appro­pri­a­tions Committee.

Minor­ity Democ­rats appeared torn between a desire to sup­port leg­is­la­tion to keep the gov­ern­ment open and their goal of replac­ing at least half of the spend­ing cuts with pro­vi­sions to increase revenue.

“Instead of clos­ing tax loop­holes for cor­po­rate jets, they want to cut 4 mil­lion meals on wheels,” the party’s House leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of Cal­i­for­nia, said of Republicans.

The bill passed with the sup­port of 53 Democ­rats, more than a quar­ter of those voting.

It now goes to the Sen­ate, where Democ­rats and the White House are deep in nego­ti­a­tions with Repub­li­cans on changes that would give the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity and other domes­tic agen­cies the same type of flex­i­bil­ity in admin­is­ter­ing the spend­ing cuts that the Pen­ta­gon would receive.

Obama’s two-hour din­ner with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans stemmed from a sug­ges­tion he made dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion recently with GOP Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­olina, accord­ing to a pres­i­den­tial aide. It also served as pre­lude to at least two trips to the Capi­tol in com­ing days as the chief exec­u­tive meets with the rank and file of both par­ties in both houses.

Obama had a good exchange of ideas with law­mak­ers, a White House offi­cial said after the din­ner. Sen. John McCain, who was among Obama’s guests, told a reporter that the meal went “just fine.”

The spend­ing leg­is­la­tion was still pend­ing on the House floor when Ryan began pulling back the cur­tain on his plan to elim­i­nate deficits in 10 years. The gov­ern­ment ran a deficit of more than $1 tril­lion for the past bud­get year, about $200 bil­lion less than the year before, and the total fed­eral debt is about $16 trillion.

To achieve his 10-year goal of pro­duc­ing a sur­plus, Ryan said he would incor­po­rate the tax increases on the wealthy that Con­gress passed on Jan. 1 over the objec­tions of many House Repub­li­cans. The hike trans­lates into an esti­mated $600 bil­lion or more in addi­tional rev­enue to the government.

The Wis­con­sin Repub­li­can also intends to retain the $85 bil­lion in spend­ing cuts, which trans­late to a sav­ings of $900 bil­lion or more over a decade, and renew with­out sig­nif­i­cant changes a con­tro­ver­sial pro­posal to over­haul Medicare.

Speak­ing of spend­ing in gen­eral, he said, “We’re mak­ing addi­tional mod­est changes to get to balance.”

Ryan had ear­lier floated the pos­si­bil­ity of accel­er­at­ing his Medicare pro­posal so it would apply to indi­vid­u­als cur­rently older than 55.

Under pres­sure from some mem­bers of the rank and file, he decided against that — but drew crit­i­cism dur­ing the day from Democ­rats anyway.

“Every time they put in a bud­get, the first thing they do is ask seniors to sac­ri­fice the most,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who heads the Democ­rats’ cam­paign committee.

Ryan’s Medicare plan would give future retirees a choice between enrolling in the exist­ing pro­gram or a ros­ter of pri­vate alter­na­tives, although in any case they would receive a monthly check from the gov­ern­ment to defray the cost and be respon­si­ble for the difference.

In its pre­vi­ous forms, the plan also capped the over­all cost of the program.

Repub­li­cans say change is nec­es­sary in order to res­cue Medicare from finan­cial ruin as mem­bers of the post-World War II baby boom gen­er­a­tion retire in large num­bers. Democ­rats con­tend the plan would effec­tively end the guar­an­tee of health care cov­er­age that Medicare embod­ies by expos­ing seniors to pro­hib­i­tively large cost increases.

Obama has pro­posed roughly $400 bil­lion in sav­ings over a decade from health care ben­e­fit pro­grams, much of it from Medicare, but he has con­sis­tently rejected Ryan’s approach.

Sen­ate Democ­rats are draft­ing their own bud­get, expected to be made pub­lic next week. Offi­cials have yet to say how large a deficit it envi­sions in a decade, but it will dif­fer in sig­nif­i­cant ways from the Repub­li­can approach.

Sen. Patty Mur­ray of Wash­ing­ton, the Bud­get Com­mit­tee chair­man, has said she will replace the across-the-board cuts with a blend of spend­ing reduc­tions and tax increase, an approach Obama favors.

Other Democ­rats say she will fol­low Obama’s lead on Medicare, set­ting up a con­trast with Repub­li­cans that her party hopes to exploit in the 2014 elections.

Obama’s own bud­get has been delayed repeat­edly this year, and it is not clear if he intends to release it before the House and Sen­ate hold their debates this month.

If the admin­is­tra­tion waits until April, it could avoid cer­tain embar­rass­ment at the hands of Repub­li­cans. It is a rit­ual of bud­get pol­i­tics for the party out of power in the White House to demand a vote on the president’s bud­get, know­ing it will fail, some­times ignominiously.

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.