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July 20, 2012 – 10:18 p.m.

To Get More Cuts Later, Conservatives Dealing Now

By Kerry Young and Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff

Some conservatives are bargaining with GOP leaders on Congress’ next big spending decision, with an offer to temporarily support a small spending bump and possibly even interim funding for the health care overhaul in exchange for their support on an agreement to punt final fiscal 2013 budget decisions into next year.

The negotiations suggest that Congress is more likely than ever to try to pass a continuing resolution well before Oct. 1, the start of the next fiscal year, sidestepping major issues until after the November elections and perhaps until early next year.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said senior Democrats are working to expedite the completion of a deal on the stopgap measure well before funding (PL 112-74, PL 112-55) expires Sept. 30. “There’s even talk of trying to work out a spending agreement before we leave in August. That would be a breakthrough,” Durbin said, referring to Congress’ five-week summer recess.

But an agreement to get a stopgap measure through the House will probably need support from conservative Republicans, and they say they may go along with a plan that would give ground now on spending in the first months of the fiscal year in the hope of deeper cuts later. “The media and the Democrats keep trying to say that Republicans are not willing to compromise. This would be a compromise position,” said Raúl Labrador, a GOP freshman who was elected with tea party support.

Betting on Republican gains in the November elections, conservatives in both chambers want to delay the completion of fiscal 2013 appropriations until the next session of Congress. Before conservatives last week began making this push, Congress had been expected to clear a stopgap fiscal 2013 continuing resolution that would last perhaps into December. That would give the appropriators in both chambers a chance to complete all 12 unfinished annual bills and give Congress a chance to clear final fiscal 2013 spending law during the lame-duck session.

It seems that leaders in both parties and both chambers want to get the fiscal 2013 stopgap funding in place without much fuss and also want to avoid the near-shutdown of government that loomed last year, unnerving many Americans.

“What I don’t want is to be in a lame duck, with a government-shutdown threat,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., “And I don’t want a government-shutdown threat in September, which I think [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid is choreographing right now. It’s not so much the funding level, while certainly that is an issue.”

Although a three-month CR remains possible, the most conservative House members are pressing for a six-month measure, which probably would encounter Democratic resistance.

Reid, of Nevada, said he had not yet made a decision on the duration and cost of the CR and would be open to discussing a number of proposals that are being developed. “Any reasonable proposal they have, I’ll review it very closely,” he said in an interview.

An Assist From Democrats?

Democrats may have an incentive to take the six-month funding measure if it comes in at the spending level they have been using for appropriations measures in the Senate, which is higher than the House level.

It has long been apparent that Congress could easily clear a CR that reflected the $1.047 trillion cap on discretionary spending set in last year’s debt-limit law (PL 112-25), which represents an increase of about $4 billion from the current level.

House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., has said Democrats would help Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, pass stopgap funding, as long as it was kept free of controversial provisions. Democrats in both chambers, for example, would reject a CR if it carried out two aims of the House GOP: cutting discretionary spending by $15 billion and blocking funds for the implementation of the health care overhaul (PL 111-148, PL 111-152).

To Get More Cuts Later, Conservatives Dealing Now

On several occasions, conservative resistance has forced Boehner to seek Democrats’ help to move spending bills whose enactment the Senate and White House would allow.

Labrador last week offered a sweetener of sorts for GOP House leadership. He was one of the more than 120 Republicans who signed a letter to Boehner asking him not to put forward any legislation that would allow continued funding of the health care overhaul. But Labrador said Boehner might persuade conservatives to vote for a measure that continued health care funding if he is willing to push its expiration date into March.

“A lot of these issues will be off the table if that is what we do,” Labrador said.

Tim Huelskamp, a GOP freshman from Kansas, suggested he could vote for such a measure even though he was among the few House Republicans who believed that the GOP plan to slice fiscal 2013 discretionary spending by $15 billion, to $1.028 trillion, did not go far enough. Huelskamp rejected the House’s fiscal 2013 budget resolution (H Con Res 112) both at markup and on the House floor.

“The No. 1 goal is to have a short-term CR into next year,” said Huelskamp said. “The rest is negotiable.”

Another GOP conservative, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, said he could grudgingly support the $1.047 trillion level in a six-month CR.

“If we can figure a way to get 219 or so Republicans to vote for a six-month CR, I think that is by far the best way to empower leadership to deal with the Senate,” Mulvaney said.

He said Congress is leaving too much work to be tackled during the lame-duck session, including the expiring tax cuts (PL 107-16, PL 108-27) and the looming automatic budget reductions under the sequester, and that a longer-term CR would at least take the completion of annual appropriations out of the mix.

“It’s such poor governance to move more and more issues into a lame duck that I could almost bite the bullet just to prevent really, really bad things from happening,” Mulvaney said.

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