Posted on 02/11/2011 1:57:04 AM PST by Libloather
Not good enough: Tea Party freshmen sink GOP spending plan
By Erik Wasson - 02/10/11 08:42 PM ET
Chastened GOP leaders promised Thursday to find a full $100 billion in spending cuts after freshmen lawmakers torpedoed a proposal that they said betrayed the party’s “Pledge to America.”
In a stinging rebuke to party leadership, Republicans on the Appropriations Committee abandoned plans to seek only $74 billion in cuts just hours before their continuing resolution was set to be unveiled.
The abrupt reversal set off a mad scramble among Republican staffers to scrape together the extra cuts in time to unveil the final spending resolution by Friday.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said Thursday evening that the GOP had come to a verbal agreement on a path forward on a continuing resolution with $100 billion in cuts.
The reversal was a clear victory for Tea Party-backed freshmen who had resisted the $74 billion cut despite endorsements from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and other members of the party leadership.
The turnaround was also a setback for the party’s leading fiscal hawk and rising star, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who unveiled the $74 billion spending plan last week and immediately faced questions about whether the proposal lived up to his tough talk about federal spending.
Cantor said Thursday evening that the caucus was “uniting” around a plan to cut $100 billion, while Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) commended the 87 freshmen lawmakers for pushing through a tough decision for America.
“What we heard here was a commitment to the $100 billion reduction number,” Cantor said. “That is what we said we were going to do and that’s what we are going to do.”
One House aide said the GOP’s failure to pass an extension of the Patriot Act this week alerted the House leadership to the growing dissatisfaction of their members.
“I think the Patriot Act failure woke up leadership to a rising problem,” the aide said.
A Republican leadership aide downplayed the apparent party rift, telling the Hill that the battle over the spending resolution prompted “one of the biggest and best debates that we have ever had as a conference in a very long time.”
“We’re having all kinds of conversations with the freshmen, the [Republican Study Committee], leadership, chairmen — this is how the House is supposed to work. It’s not supposed to come from one office,” the source said.
Interior and Environment Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) struggled to explain the leadership’s backtracking on Thursday.
He defended the earlier proposal from leadership as legitimately living up to the Pledge to return to 2008 levels of spending but said he could see why member were unhappy.
“There are an awful lot of members of our conference, who said, ‘No, I committed to cutting $100 billion,’” he said.
“The promise got away from us, but it is a promise that we made to the American people,” he said. “If that is what the conference wants to do, I am willing to do that. I can cut the Interior Department in half … just tell me a number and I will get a bill there.”
“There’s going to be some pretty dramatic cuts,” Simpson said, adding that he told Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that “each individual member is going to say to themselves, ‘Am I going to do more damage voting for these dramatic cuts, or do I do more damage to myself not voting for $100 billion in spending?’”
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an Appropriations Committee member who voted against the initial proposal, said party leaders were forced to reverse course by the rank-and-file.
“I thought it was pretty clear to all that we needed to cut a little bit more deeply,” Flake said.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) had intended to release a continuing resolution (CR) Thursday to fund the government after March 4 that would have cut $32 billion from current spending levels and $74 billion from Obama’s 2011 budget request.
But the growing unrest over the proposal forced appropriators back to the drawing board.
“After meeting with my subcommittee Chairs, we have determined that the CR can and will reach a total of $100 billion in cuts compared to the President’s request immediately — fully meeting the goal outlined in the Republican ‘Pledge to America’ in one fell swoop,” Rogers said in a statement Thursday.
The new continuing resolution, which will be unveiled Friday, will contain $100 billion in cuts from Obama’s budget, although Republicans and Democrats were arguing about the math used to calculate that number late Thursday. For example, a deeper cut could be achieved by using current spending levels rather than an Obama 2011 budget never enacted.
GOP leaders acknowledged that the $100 billion cut would include reductions in security spending, which could be opposed through floor amendments.
Rogers had originally proposed the $16 billion in cuts to security spending to reach the $100 billion target, but Flake said that idea was unsatisfactory.
“That is the kind of math we have been ridiculing for years,” Flake said.
Flake’s math had the backing of the conservative Club for Growth, which issued an alert to all members warning they would be given a negative score on spending if they voted for anything less than $100 billion in non-security cuts in the CR.
Aides said the revised measure must be released Friday if it is to have time for a debate and floor vote next week as planned. Under a three-day rule the GOP instituted in January, bills have to be unveiled three days before a floor vote. The House is in session for four days next week.
Staff was scrambling to come up with more cuts to non-security discretionary spending on Thursday after a late-night huddle Wednesday by Appropriations Committee cardinals.
Labor and Health Appropriations subcommittee Chairman Dennis Rehberg (R-Mont.) said Thursday he has been instructed to quickly find an addition $11 billion to cut from his area of spending in a matter of hours.
“For me it’s painful ... I have to deal with labor, it’s job training; with health, it’s community health centers; with education, it’s kids,” he said. “Mine is a painful process to find the savings necessary.”
At a Thursday subcommittee hearing, Appropriations member John Culberson (R-Texas) urged NASA Inspector General Paul Martin to give him a list of specific cuts immediately because the continuing resolution was being written as they spoke.
“We need real specific, real quickly,” he said.
Under the Rogers bill, NASA was already set to receive a $379 million cut from Obama’s budget request.
If some form of a continuing resolution is not passed by March 4, the federal government will be forced to shut down.
The House will be out of session the last full week of February, leaving only one week for the House and Senate to act before the deadline.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has already said that even if the House passes a CR next week, the Senate would be unable to deal with it by March 4. That means a short-term continuing resolution, perhaps lasting only for a few weeks, will be needed to avoid a shutdown.
“For me it’s painful ... I have to deal with labor, it’s job training; with health, it’s community health centers; with education, it’s kids,” he said. “Mine is a painful process to find the savings necessary.”
At least he has a job. I’d rather have a hard job than no job.
As for pain, it’s not as painful as our children’s future if we default.
You forgot to add...looking for a nice place in the back of conservatives to stick the knife......
No she did not. The punted, requesting $45B per year. Michelle is a light weight compared to these freshmen.
May God bless these men and women.
Ryan is a clown. He’s already off my island. IMHO, he needs to be replaced.
Those so called young guns are a joke. The Three Amigos would do better.
The EPA is only worth 11.5B per year. It’s cheap to say no.
Indeed. I've been in a few of those knife fights here locally.
Additionally, I'd enact the following:
Maybe it would be clearer to the dunces (both in and out of the government)if they quit using “billions” and “trillions.”
“100 billion” sounds like a lot until it is stated as “0.1 trillion” as compared to this years 1.5 trillion deficit or the national debt of 13 or 14 trillion.
And obama stating he cut 150 million is a laughable 0.00015 trillion.
Very important point.
Does anyone know if the (pitifully inadequate) $100 billion in "cuts" are reductions in the rate of increase as opposed to real reductions in spending?
Assume every Republican is a RINO until they prove themselves otherwise. ALso assume that a Conservative can slip back into RINOness at any moment.
These are issues the states should be handling, not the federal government.
&&&
Exactly
I said this about a third party....it does not take a majority to hold congress and exert power...since for the most part, the house is pretty much an even split, it only takes 10% to control all legislation....and the tea partiers have more than that...now flex the muscle they have, and if they are not allowed, gridlock baby, gridlock
Needs to be a minimum of $100 billion from this fiscal year. Under no circumstances should they use zero's proposed budget as a basis for anything. I'm actually thinking Rand Paul's proposal is the way to go.
It may take several more election cycles to root out the problems.
In my career as a manager in a large company, I spend more than 2 decades administrating a budget. I had to cut it more often than I increased it. A few percent cut was trivial. The 10 to 20 percent cuts were what required the sharper pencils.
The Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid "Entitlements" are supposedly sacrosanct. But how much of those budget dollars actually go to the intended recipients? I'll bet less than half. The rest is more administrative cost and bungling waste. Again, a few percent is trivial. Let me at it!
“My top favorites for complete 100% defunding:”
Good list, to which I would like to add elimination of Dept. of HUD and the Civil Rights Division of the Dept. of Injustice (which, from on high, tells states and local governments how they must draw their voting districts and run their elections).
How about they ask themselves, "how much damage to America will it do if we don't cut spending?", instead of worrying about votes?
Oh, that's an excellent suggestion.
We could use less self-serving politicians and more public servants.
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