CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 4, 2012 – 9:49 p.m.
House Takes On the Sequester
By Paul M. Krawzak, CQ Staff
House Republicans will take their first concrete steps on Monday to avoid an automatic spending “sequester” early next year and to begin a detailed debate on ways to scale back spending on mandatory programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.
“There is an absolute necessity to get our fiscal house in order before greater challenges arise in the country from an economic standpoint,” said Budget Committee member
The Budget Committee meets at 2 p.m. to mark up two related bills, one of which would stop most of the $109 billion in across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect Jan. 2 under the August debt limit law (PL 112-25). The second is a “budget reconciliation” measure that would put in place more than $300 billion in new savings over 10 years to substitute for the sequester.
The Rules Committee is expected to incorporate the sequester replacement language into the reconciliation bill and the House is expected to pass the combined measure on May 10 before adjourning for the week.
The sequester replacement bill (
Overall, the automatic cuts next year total $109 billion, with about $55 billion drawn from defense discretionary spending, $43 billion from domestic discretionary programs and the balance from Medicare and other mandatory spending accounts. The sequester replacement language would not block reductions in mandatory spending, except for a relatively small amount related to defense.
House Republicans defend their plan as the only specific proposal for averting the automatic cuts that also has drawn substantial congressional support. The reconciliation legislation is a direct product of the budget resolution (
The elements of the reconciliation bill were produced by six House authorizing committees in recent weeks. The committees were charged by the budget resolution with finding at least $261 billion in spending cuts, and produced billions more than required, not including areas of overlap among committees, a GOP aide said.
Democrats Object
Democrats are set to vote against the GOP’s proposed cuts, which they criticize for reducing spending on programs that they say help the poor and unemployed, while leaving federal assistance programs for companies and higher income individuals untouched.
Democrats also intend to offer alternative prescriptions for replacing the sequester that they say will be more balanced, but Republicans will oppose those.
“Our argument will be that this is another example of Republicans being totally out of touch,” said
In their alternative, Budget Committee Democrats may propose eliminating tax breaks that benefit some companies, in an effort to increase tax revenue instead of finding additional spending cuts. Democrats may propose cutting farm subsidies instead of food stamps.
House Takes On the Sequester
“They whack funding for food nutrition and health programs for kids,” Van Hollen said. “That is just another example of how their budget doubles down on protecting special interests, including very wealthy individuals, at the expense of everyone and everything else.”
At its markup on Monday, the Budget Committee will assemble the reconciliation recommendations from the six committees into a reconciliation bill. Under the 1974 Budget Act (PL 93-344), which created the reconciliation process, the Budget Committee is prohibited from making any substantive changes in the deficit reduction proposals it receives from authorizing committees. Budget Committee members can offer motions to request that the Rules Committee allow specific amendments to be considered on the floor.
Reconciliation bills also have the advantage of expedited consideration in the Senate, including a ban on filibusters and a limitation on floor debate time.
To enjoy those privileges, however, the House and Senate would both have to adopt a budget resolution that calls for reconciliation. There is very little possibility of that happening, because Senate leaders have no plans to allow a vote on a budget resolution. The Senate might take up a House-passed reconciliation bill under regular legislative procedures, but almost certainly 60 votes would be required to cut off debate and bring the measure to a vote.
Nonetheless, House Republicans regard the reconciliation measure as a step toward post-election budget negotiations that are widely expected to occur.
Price said the legislation “begins the discussion about where the possibilities for savings exist within the federal budget, so that people have a longer period of time to review but also to weigh in on what those solutions might be at the end.”
Among the reconciliation savings proposals that draw strong support from Republicans and vehement opposition from Democrats is a proposed cap on court awards in cases of medical malpractice claims, with the goal of reducing the cost of health care. Others would roll back provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law (PL 111-203) and repeal the social services block grant program.
Some observers said it is not surprising that Republicans produced a partisan document as their negotiating position for replacing the automatic cuts.
“I think they wanted to lay down their marker,” said Patrick Louis Knudsen, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former GOP policy director for the House Budget Committee. “They felt they wanted a package that could get strong support on the Republican side, lay that down and see if the other side will even negotiate,” Knudsen said.
Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was associate director of the Office of Management and Budget during the administration of President Bill Clinton, said she doubts lawmakers will reach an agreement to replace the automatic cuts before the election, and maybe not even in the post-election session that is expected to follow.
“I think that during the lame duck there will be additional efforts to get rid of the sequester,” Sawhill said. “But they probably will simply kick the can down the road by three to six months, or something like that.”