In eight-plus years in Congress, Rep. John Barrow has never voted in favor of a budget.
The Augusta Democrat has had plenty of options, as evidenced last week when Republicans and Democrats in the House put forth a menagerie of outlines of the nation’s fiscal future. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s was the only one to pass, but there was the arch-conservative Republican Study Committee budget, the arch-liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus budget, the Congressional Black Caucus budget, the Senate Democratic budget and the House Democratic budget.
Barrow, a perennially endangered Blue Dog Democrat who is thinking of running for U.S. Senate next year, pressed “no” for all of them.
“For all the time I’ve been here, that atmosphere has been so partisan that the budget proposals that have been generated by each side (have) never been nothing but a partisan message piece to go after the other side,” Barrow said in an interview. “These are just souped-up versions of the same old stuff we’ve been looking at for year after year.”
The never-ending struggle over tax and spending policy played out in both chambers last week in a manner that was at once substantive and meaningless, and sidelined moderates like Barrow. Both chambers had budgets designed to get a critical mass of votes in one party and to demonize “our friends on the other side” as much as possible. Neither has even a March Madness 16-seed’s chance of becoming law.
The Ryan budget reaches a surplus in 10 years in part through fundamental changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs. It also endeavors to simplify the tax code while reducing marginal income tax rates – for a Grover Norquist-friendly, net-zero effect on tax revenue.
Senate Democrats prefer to raise taxes by $1 trillion over a decade, institute stimulus (but don’t use that word) spending on infrastructure and other priorities, and trim domestic programs and the Pentagon. The result is deficits between 2 percent and 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product – down from 7 percent in 2012.
Congress has not agreed to a budget since 2009 – in the days of overwhelming one-party control – but the government has not ground to a halt, because appropriations measures have chugged along in stopgap fashion ever since. The budget sets the big picture; appropriators fill in the details. And though it was not an official budget, the deal to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 included spending caps that Congress has heeded.
So the real plan for how your federal government spends money made its way through both chambers easily last week, the result of extensive bipartisan, bicameral work. Its passage means there has not been a real government shutdown threat since 2011.
Barrow voted for that. The only Georgians who voted against it in either chamber were U.S. Reps. John Lewis, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey, Jack Kingston and Lynn Westmoreland.
The real legislating sailed on as partisan budgets point-scoring continued on the floors of both chambers, as Barrow pointed out, but his preferred solution is a modified version of that offered by the “warring tribes” he denounces.
“The long-term hope is going to depend on us electing more members of Congress who come from the center, who represent districts that the moderate majority has the opportunity to elect the congressman of their choice,” he said.
Translation: If everyone agreed with me, Congress would be a better place.
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