Main ContentGOP gains upper hand on spending
With a bipartisan compromise fading, Democrats appear resigned to another short-term, year-end spending bill that sets up an early fight in the new Congress between the White House and newly empowered Republicans demanding deep cuts in domestic appropriations.
“It’s touch and go, at the best,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO on Tuesday of his efforts to strike some accord by cutting close to $26 billion from President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget. Instead, Republicans want no increase above 2010 funding and are maneuvering to buy enough time so the incoming GOP majority in the House can instigate tens of billions in additional rescissions, rolling back many programs to 2008 levels.
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Indeed, even as Inouye has been working with Senate Republicans on trying to reach a compromise, GOP aides on the House Appropriations Committee have been preparing rescission packages to be offered next year. And those reductions, about $62 billion below current funding, dwarf whatever savings would be achieved from the much more publicized battle over parochial earmarks.
As a fallback position, the White House is asking Democrats to use their remaining power to try to push through a nine-month resolution that would effectively freeze accounts at current levels through Oct. 1 and be a bulwark against Republican attacks. But Inouye has balked, saying this would be an abdication of Congress’s role and challenging the GOP to come back to him next year and justify the additional reductions.
“That would be the easy way out, but it’s not a responsible way,” Inouye said. “We have responsibility and obligation as members of Congress to conduct oversight.”
“It should be an interesting exercise,” he said, laughing in anticipation of the fight. “They’ll have to explain what they mean by those cuts; I want to see how they do it.”
Inouye’s independence and the heightened role of the Senate as the last Democratic domain in the new Congress underscore the changed landscape after November’s elections. Just weeks away from losing their majority, House Democrats have largely surrendered the debate to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a veteran of the appropriations process, is showing his own impatience with the White House after surviving a tough reelection.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
GOP gains upper hand on spending - David Rogers
via politico.com
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