Amid acrimony, negotiators carry on

By Kerry Young, Congress.org

Spending talks among the Obama administration, Democrats and top House Republicans are continuing, despite another round of finger-pointing and heated rhetoric between the two parties.

Even with negotiators pressing ahead, the two sides must deal with the same issue that has bogged down talks on fiscal 2011 appropriations for weeks — finding a level of spending rollbacks that leaders can sell in both chambers.

Republicans are sticking by their demands for $61.5 billion in discretionary cuts from current spending, and Democrats continue to balk at that number.

A recent compromise, floated by the White House, would cut current spending by $20 billion beyond the $10 billion in reductions Congress already has made in the latest two continuing resolutions. But it won little praise Monday, particularly from House conservatives.

With the two sides separated by more than $30 billion in cuts, and many House Republicans eager to put their stamp on government spending, a compromise could be hard to reach in the two weeks before the current stopgap spending law (PL 112-6) expires.

In fact, wide circulation of the White House number brought another round of partisan barbs. Both parties tried to pre-emptively lay blame for a government shutdown on the other side.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Republicans tied to the tea party movement were responsible for upending a recent round of talks.

“Apparently these extremists would rather shut down the government and risk sending our economy back into a recession than work with Democrats or even their own leadership to find a responsible compromise,” Reid said.

Republicans wasted little time responding, saying Democrats were threatening a shutdown by refusing to allow what the GOP considers reasonable reductions to the nation’s more than $1 trillion in annual discretionary spending.

“In the scope of our debt crisis, if Sen. Reid and Sen. [Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.] force the government to partially shut down over these sensible spending cuts, Americans will hold them accountable,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

House GOP leaders have scheduled a press conference Tuesday to decry what they see as the Senate’s “failure” to pass a long-term fiscal 2011 bill.

On Monday, Senate Democrats tried to cast a favorable light on the $20 billion cut figure, suggesting that more moderate Republicans might support such a plan.

“The Republicans have to resolve their own deep disagreements before we can find a middle ground between the two parties,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “We have tried to wait patiently for them and do that, but our patience and the American people’s patience is wearing very, very thin.”

But Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, was not buying that argument. Sessions noted that House Republicans were adamant in their calls for $61.5 billion in fiscal 2011 cuts, and accused Reid of inventing Republican support.

“That’s Sen. Reid trying to create a split,” Sessions said.

Instead, Sessions fired back that many Senate Democrats, if left to make their own decisions, would back the House GOP position.

“Assuming that they were left free, I believe that there would be more than enough Democratic votes,” Sessions said. But, “apparently, they are under pressure” to protest the $61.5 billion in cuts, he said.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, pointed to the bipartisan House vote on the latest continuing resolution as a sign that a compromise could be reached.

Harkin said it was encouraging that Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, relied on Democrats to get past the “tea party vigilantes” to pass the measure.

Although 54 Republicans voted against the three-week bill, 85 Democrats supported it, allowing it to pass, 271-158.

“I thought that gave us hope that Boehner was willing then to work with those Republicans and us over here to strike a deal, even though he couldn’t get the tea party people on board,” Harkin said. “But, I don’t know. Maybe that’s out the window now.”

Six rounds of stopgap funding have been enacted, with the current one set to expire April 8. That series of extensions has left much of the government in a long-term budgetary limbo, a situation that is particularly difficult for the Pentagon and its multifront deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Members of both parties have said the latest stopgap measure will be the last for this fiscal year.

Like many Democrats, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, says GOP demands to slash discretionary spending would damage the fragile economy.

On a Monday television appearance, Van Hollen argued that changes to the tax code need to be considered as part of a fiscal overhaul. He suggested that the federal government could return to the tax rates seen under the Clinton administration, bringing in additional revenue to reduce borrowing.

But bringing tax changes into the debate probably would be anathema for Republicans and would draw heavy fire from conservative groups such as Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform.

A coalition of tea party groups plans a rally March 31 in Washington to remind Republicans of the desire for deep fiscal 2011 cuts. Still, even the cuts envisioned by House Republicans would do little to immediately curb the gap between annual federal spending and revenue — or the deficit.

“Instead of having the Speaker whip his caucus, the tea party element is whipping the Speaker,” Van Hollen said. “You have a lot of Republicans in the House who are more afraid of Grover Norquist than they are of the deficit.”

The current spending impasse could serve as prelude to even more difficult budget battles later this year, including a vote to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, a freshman from Kansas, on Monday announced he would not support an increase in the debt limit unless President Obama becomes more directly involved in efforts to overhaul federal finances.

The overwhelming majority of federal debt is subject to a congressionally imposed limit, which now stands at $14.294 trillion. As of March 25, the debt subject to the limit stood at $14.159 trillion.

The Treasury has estimated that the debt limit will be reached between April 15 and May 31. It may soon update this estimate.

“To date, you have provided little or no leadership on what I believe to be the most important issue facing our nation — our national debt,” Moran said. “With no indication that your willingness to lead will change, I want to inform you I will vote ‘no’ on your request to raise the debt ceiling.”

Link: http://www.congress.org/news/2011/03/29/amid_acrimony_negotiators_carry_on/amid_acrimony_negotiators_carry_on