Barack Obama is sending the last budget blueprint of his presidency to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, kicking off a final fiscal bloodbath with congressional Republicans that will likely drag on until after the November elections.
The reality is that the lion’s share of the White House’s request is dismissed the moment it crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, such as the proposed $10-per-barrel tax on oil companies that landed with a thud in GOP circles last week.
But Obama’s recommendations are not insignificant.
They are a critical marker for Democrats, who will use their position to defend the president’s priorities in his final year. The blueprint also holds more weight in areas such as defense and public health in which there is more bipartisan agreement. The White House’s request for $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight the Zika virus, for example, received a much warmer reception on Capitol Hill than the oil proposal.
The administration’s blueprint also has an outsized importance for individual projects important to Georgia such as the Savannah Port expansion, since lawmakers themselves can no longer earmark funding for specific ventures.
“It’s not going to move in its entirety, but bits and pieces of it will absolutely be used in debate ahead,” former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, who was the top House Republican overseeing health funding until 2014 and now works as a lobbyist at Squire Patton Boggs, said of the administration’s request.
In theory, this year’s government spending tango between the White House and lawmakers should be easier than 2015’s protracted battle. That’s because the two-year budget deal then-Speaker John Boehner brokered on his way out the door last fall took away the largest sticking point between Democrats and Republicans: exactly how much money the government should spend on national defense versus all other federal programs, including community policing and scientific research. The accord raised spending levels by $30 billion for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
But that doesn’t mean the work will be a cakewalk on Capitol Hill. History and the elections virtually guarantee that few final decisions will be made before the end of the year. As it has during every election year for the past two decades, Congress will most likely approve short-term spending bill at the end of September that puts government funding on autopilot until after the elections.
For one, the elections alter the center of gravity for lawmakers, pulling them back toward their districts to campaign instead of staying in Washington to take tough votes that could haunt them in November.
Second, with much of the early work on federal spending happening during the thick of the primary season, many lawmakers will try to use the must-pass government funding bills to score political points, making it difficult for leaders to strike the messy bipartisan compromises necessary to pass those measures on time.
The presidential and congressional campaigns “are going to exacerbate the divisions between the parties because neither party’s going to want to give any ground. The Republicans certainly aren’t going to want to give any ground to Obama and be seen as helping him in any way,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University.
On the other hand, Abramowitz said he does not think Republican leaders would want to risk a government shutdown that could hurt GOP candidates for president and Congress.
Congress’ next move
On the front line of the opposing side is Roswell Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Price, who as chairman of the House Budget Committee will get the first chance to swipe back at the administration’s priorities.
Price is expected to quickly advance the House GOP's opposing vision for federal spending in the weeks ahead. That blueprint is expected to stay consistent with previous Republican budget plans and propose balancing federal coffers within 10 years. That's no small task — a bill Congress passed in December locking in more than $600 billion in tax breaks means Price will need to propose cutting even deeper into entitlement programs such as Medicare than in his 2015 plan.
The heated rhetoric has already begun. Democrats are angry at Price and his Senate counterpart for breaking with tradition and not inviting Obama’s budget chief to testify about the president’s proposal.
“We must hope that this callow Republican slight does not indicate a larger lack of seriousness in moving forward with a bipartisan budget that honors our agreements and meets the needs of hard-working American families,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Price said it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
“Rather than spend time on a proposal that, if anything like this administration’s previous budgets, will double down on the same failed policies that have led to the worst economic recovery in modern times, Congress should continue our work on building a budget that balances and that will foster a healthy economy,” he said.
Price and House Republican leaders want to use their own budget blueprint to showcase their party’s fiscal vision and unlock a special legislative tool that makes it significantly easier to get bills to the president’s desk. The GOP used the same means last year for a measure defunding the health care law and Planned Parenthood that Obama ultimately vetoed. Some would like to use it again for overhauling poverty and welfare programs.
But Republicans are already divided, throwing the future of the GOP budget blueprint into doubt. Leaders will need to walk a thin line as they seek to unite defense hawks who like the budget agreement’s increased Pentagon spending and conservatives angry that the accord increases overall expenditures.
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