TWO VIEWS
The budget proposal faces strong opposition from both sides of the aisle, with House Democrats insisting on an extension of jobless benefits and Republicans fighting a proposed airline ticket fee to pay for TSA agents.
“We cannot, cannot support a budget agreement that does not include unemployment insurance in the budget.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif.
“If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. This is a tax increase, nothing more.”
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
With hopes of a “grand bargain” long gone, congressional negotiators now are seeking a more modest budget deal before year-end to ease the automatic spending cuts that are squeezing both the Pentagon and domestic federal programs.
But the going is getting rougher.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she would withhold support from any compromise to ease across-the-board cuts until Republicans also agree to renew expiring unemployment benefits for America’s long-term jobless, adding a major complication.
At the same time, conservatives are balking at a proposal to raise fees on airline tickets to pay for TSA agents as part of an agreement, another hurdle.
GOP leaders, meanwhile, are preparing a backup plan for averting another government shutdown in January if there’s no budget deal by then.
Negotiators on Capitol Hill are facing resistance from Pelosi and other Democrats determined to add $25 billion to extend federally-paid jobless benefits. Those benefits average $269 a week to people whose 26 weeks of state-paid unemployment benefits have run out.
Pelosi’s position is significant because she is going to have to supply Democratic votes if any deal is going to pass the Republican-majority House.
Many conservatives are expected to abandon any agreement that contains fee proposals such as increasing Transportation Security Administration charges that could add $5 to the cost of a typical round-trip airline ticket.
The budget talks are just one item in a packed year-end agenda for Congress. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, insists the House will exit Washington by next Friday, leaving little time to pass a budget bill, a defense policy measure and renewal of food stamps and farm programs.
With the massive defense policy bill stalled in the Senate, leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees have been working on a backup plan to move quickly on a pared-back version in which all disputes have been resolved in advance.
The House hopes to vote next week on that defense bill and then send it to the Senate, which would clear it and send it to President Barack Obama.
The bill would include some of the more controversial elements on new rules to stem sexual assaults in the military and provisions on handling terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The fallback plan, however, is contingent on Senate Democrats and Republicans abandoning their push for amendments on new sanctions on Iran, National Security Agency spying, Afghanistan and other issues.
As for the overall budget, talk of a deal to stabilize the government’s spiraling debt is no longer heard. Taxes and cuts to Medicare benefits are off the table.
House and Senate negotiators are trying to seal a smaller budget pact that would take the roughest edges off of automatic spending cuts that threaten a second wave of furloughs of federal workers and damage to military readiness.
Exact details are tightly held, and days of negotiations likely remain. But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., are focusing on a potential pact that leaves politically toxic proposals such as taxes off the table and instead focuses on less controversial proposals left over from prior budget rounds.
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