Assailed from the right and the left, a bipartisan two-year budget deal designed to ease Congress’ fiscal tension nonetheless gained steam toward passage, with a U.S. House vote coming as soon as Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Tom Price, a Roswell Republican, echoed the feelings of many supporters of the deal in calling it imperfect but necessary.
“It is increasingly obvious that success — particularly in divided government — has to be measured in positive steps, not leaps and bounds,” Price, an influential conservative, said in a statement.
Negotiated by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the deal increases budget caps by $62 billion over two years — partially replacing across-the-board “sequestration” cuts — while reducing the deficit by $23 billion over 10 years through a grab bag of spending cuts, fee increases and changes in federal pensions.
U.S. Rep. David Scott, a Democrat from Atlanta, said he was undecided on the vote but hopeful “we can finally start disavowing this sequestration. We’ve got two years here, and we have to come to something where we don’t get everything that we want.”
The deal would not necessarily prevent another government shutdown when federal funding expires in mid-January, but it does establish consensus spending levels for military and nonmilitary programs. The details would be filled in by individual appropriations bills that still could produce a fight — as they did in October over the new health care law.
The accord also does not address the federal borrowing limit, which will likely be reached sometime in the spring.
Many conservatives were displeased with the deal. Though he assumed it would pass, Republican U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County said he would probably vote against the budget because of its increased spending and relatively puny long-term deficit reduction.
“It’s just hard for me to believe that some of the talking points they give, one of them was this deal says dead people won’t get more Social Security checks,” Westmoreland said, referring to a provision in the bill restricting access to the government’s “Death Master File” in order to prevent fraud. “I didn’t know you had to have a budget to do that.”
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Gainesville Republican, agreed the deal does not do enough to tackle the big programs that drive long-term deficits.
“At this point, it’s not something I’m very happy with,” Collins said as he emerged from a meeting in which Ryan tried to sell the House GOP caucus on the plan.
Republican U.S. Rep. Austin Scott of Tifton was torn. He represents a military-heavy district that includes Robins Air Force Base, and the Department of Defense has been pressing hard to prevent another round of across-the-board cuts in military spending.
“I would like to see them get that relief,” Scott said. “Quite honestly, though, I’m still concerned about the fact that we’re still spending a lot more money than we’re taking in.”
The deal amplified the ongoing rift between conservative outside groups and House Republican leaders. The Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America and FreedomWorks — which have the power to move Republican votes — came out strongly against the deal, saying it partially abandoned the “sequestration” spending cuts with nothing much to show for it.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, lashed out at the groups during a news conference Wednesday.
“They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals,” Boehner said. “This is ridiculous. Listen, if you’re for more deficit reduction, you are for this agreement.”
The savings used to create that deficit reduction include reduced payments to student loan debt collectors and taking money away from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The bill also brings in $12.6 billion by increasing Transportation Safety Administration fees for air travelers. They will go from $2.50 per flight, with a maximum of $5 per trip including plane changes, to a flat $5.60 per trip.
“The first takeaway from the change or potential change in TSA fees is that airfares are going up for consumers,” Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Richard Anderson said Wednesday during the company’s investor day in New York. “It’s a sales tax.”
Despite the messy details, many praised the pact as a way to prevent the economy-rattling brinksmanship of recent years.
“One of the things that we needed to improve our economy has been recently announced, and that’s the resolution of budget problems in Washington,” Gov. Nathan Deal said in Atlanta.
“Most of the blanket that has been on our economy in our state as well as the country as a whole is the uncertainty that lingers out there at the federal level,” Deal said. “It’s not something the state can remove. The budget is one of those issues, and that will give certainty to businesses as to what to expect.”
Democrats made a late push in the negotiations to include an extension of federal long-term unemployment benefits, which expire Dec. 28, and were still fighting Wednesday to attach it.
According to a White House report, 54,400 unemployed Georgians would immediately lose benefits, as the maximum time to claim benefits goes from 65 weeks to 18 weeks.
As a whole, the deal appeared to be most appealing for what it did not do: force one party to cave on a vital principle.
“The one thing that we were successful in this negotiation is the Social Security, the Medicaid, the Medicare is untouched,” David Scott said. “They didn’t get any tax increases. So what … we have left is something here, that maybe if we can just get a little bit of help on unemployment … I’m, as you can see, struggling with a way to come around to support this.”
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