 |
Politico...
GOP softens budget
timeline ambition
By John Bresnahan
5/20/11
John Boehner is promising a freewheeling, open amendment process on
spending bills. | Jay Westcott/POLITICO
As he prepares his party for another epic spending fight with Democrats
over the 2012 appropriations bills, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is
finding out that governing is a lot tougher than it looks.
Boehner is having to back off an ambitious proposal from last fall to
break up the 12 annual appropriations bills into dozens of smaller
measures in order to help cut spending.
On top of that, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers
(R-Ky.), who objected to Boehner’s plan, has acknowledged that
Republicans will also miss their stated goal of finishing the spending
bills in the House by the August recess.
The setback on appropriations comes as Boehner and the White House duel
over raising the U.S. debt limit — a fight that will last well into the
summer — and a bipartisan group of lawmakers attempts to hammer out a
broader budget deal with Vice President Joe Biden.
Like much of what happens in Washington, the process is often just as
important as the result. Republicans had wanted to show how serious
they were about cutting spending by bringing up spending bills for
agency after agency, slashing the bureaucracy one fine cut at a time on
the House floor. Now, they won’t do that — and they’re not even going
to meet their own self-imposed deadline for passing the regular
spending bills.
Boehner first suggested breaking the appropriations bills into smaller
pieces to allow members to strike funding they opposed.
“Let’s break them up, to encourage scrutiny and make spending cuts
easier,” Boehner said during a September speech at the American
Enterprise Institute.
But after a meeting last week between Boehner and Rogers — which
included Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who controls the floor
schedule — that proposal will not be implemented.
Republicans blame Democrats for the delay in the fiscal 2011 spending
bills. The GOP had to clean up last year’s spending business in April
to avoid a government shutdown.
But now Republicans have to figure out how to handle the fiscal 2012
appropriations process — their first real chance for the GOP to put a
yearlong imprint on the size and scope of government.
House Republicans are considering a plan that would allow “separate
votes but not separate legislation for some of the appropriations
bills,” said a senior GOP aide, although details on how that will work
are not yet available.
Boehner is also promising a freewheeling, open amendment process that
could create a sort of Wild West scene on spending bills.
Boehner said he wants to return to the previous House tradition of
allowing appropriations bills to be considered in such a manner, a
practice that had eroded in the past 16 years of alternating Democratic
and GOP control. Republicans may even allow amendments to be offered
that haven’t been screened by the leadership, according to several GOP
aides.
Read the rest of the story at Politico
|
