CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
July 18, 2011 – 9:01 p.m.

House GOP Centrists Hushed but Not Silent in Debt Debate

House GOP Centrists Hushed but Not Silent in Debt Debate

After nine terms in the House, Castle lost to a tea party challenger in his state’s Republican Senate primary last September.

Centrist Republicans have reached out to some of Boehner’s conservative allies — such as Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas — and enlisted them to try to talk with or at least restrain a group of 36 dissidents who have vowed to oppose any debt limit increase unless Congress sends to the states a balanced-budget amendment (H J Res 1).

House leaders seem to be doing that, having shifted course July 15 and replaced plans to vote on the tough constitutional amendment with the bill (HR 2560) the House takes up Tuesday.

That measure would raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, but only after Congress submits to the states a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. It also would cut fiscal 2012 spending by billions of dollars.

The bill has virtually no chance of passage in the Senate.

Open to Compromise

Fear of political reprisal — of being branded a “Republican in name only” — is not the only factor driving Republican moderates underground.

Judy Biggert of Illinois says centrists have been muted in part because they hold coveted gavels and seats on exclusive panels that require strict party discipline.

The conflation of reducing the deficit and raising the debt limit makes it difficult for centrists to separate the two issues, particularly for voters. Like conservatives, centrists want to rein in federal spending; unlike conservatives, they are open to compromise.

But support of a plan to raise the debt limit without sufficient restraints on spending could leave centrists open to charges they are not serious about reducing the deficit.

The debate represents one of the first issues that has put daylight between conservatives and centrists — even if centrists are reluctant to take their differences public.

Before the debate unfolded, longtime moderates such as Rules Chairman David Dreier of California and Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan say centrists were pivoting to the right, pulling back from their usual opposition to trimming social services and education funding out of concern that deficits pose a greater threat to such programs.

So far in this Congress, they have backed deep spending cuts for the current fiscal year as well as fiscal 2012, and voted for a strict House budget blueprint (H Con Res 34) that included major changes in the Medicare program.

House GOP Centrists Hushed but Not Silent in Debt Debate

Centrists want deficit reduction to deliver long-term stable funding for social service and education programs, Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania said.

But raising the debt limit is different, said James Thurber, director of the Center for Presidential and Congressional Studies. The complexity and political challenges of the deficit reduction and debt limit debate have forced centrists to the sidelines, he said, but in the end they are likely to back a compromise.

“The adults think that a debt limit increase is needed,” Thurber said last week. “For some, there are threats of primary challengers from the tea party.”

Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio is less sanguine and fears that the split between the hard-line conservative faction and the more cautious “old guard” Republicans could block any debt limit increase. “It’s a real problem,” he said.

LaTourette said he and other party centrists are waiting to see a proposal that has the potential to pass Congress. “There’s nothing you can wrap your arms around,” LaTourette said.

Playing From the Sidelines

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said centrists are playing an “essential and timely role” in backing Boehner’s efforts to finish a debt limit deal. “They realize the nation is standing at the edge of an abyss. It’s time for people with more moderate views to tell the public that the GOP is not irrevocably in the hands of the tea party,” Baker said.

Stivers and others say they are part of a “quiet majority” within the 240-member conference ready to support a debt limit increase if Boehner can make an acceptable deal on spending cuts and curbs on future spending. “We’ve got to figure out how to pay for the government the American people need and want,” Stivers said Monday.

In talks with centrists and conservatives, Stivers said, Boehner polled lawmakers for their views on raising the debt limit and then advised them to “be where you’ve got to be” on the issue.

Ultimately, centrists predict, Boehner will prevail.

“There is a pretty good bloc that won’t support a debt limit increase. But ultimately it’s not great enough to limit our ability to get a bill through,” said Charles Bass of New Hampshire, a longtime Tuesday Group member.