U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Roswell steered the House Republican Budget through his committee Thursday, but the challenging fight over defense funding was merely delayed until next week.
After a marathon Wednesday session — in which House GOP leaders reportedly made an unsuccessful end run around Price to appease military hawks — the Budget Committee voted along partisan lines to pass the Price plan, which sets spending at $3.79 trillion next year and aims over the next decade to make $5.5 trillion in cuts to the current spending path.
House Speaker John Boehner said new help for the Department of Defense will be included in floor votes next week.
“There is overwhelming support in our conference for providing additional resources to protect our national security,” Boehner said at a news conference.
But the real question is not in the amounts, but in whether cuts need to be found elsewhere in the budget to pay for them.
Price set next year’s defense funding at the legal cap of $523 billion, but the military and many Republicans have been sounding the alarm for years about the damage wrought by “sequestration” cuts. So Price sought to strike a balance by adding an extra $38 billion for off-budget war funding.
Thus, the spending caps remain in place and the military can get what it wants. It matched President Barack Obama’s request, though he had more for the base military budget and less in the war account.
But many GOP lawmakers derided this as a gimmick and worried that lawmakers would be unable to find the required cuts elsewhere in the domestic budget to pay for it — or that it would cause long-term problems in funding wars.
“Defense hawks say they don’t want to set the precedent that war funding is offset. Fine,” said U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall, a Lawrenceville Republican who serves on the committee and wants the offset.
“Deficit hawks would say we don’t want to set the precedent that budget caps don’t matter and you can get around them with war funding,” he said.
Price left the door open to possible changes ahead.
“We look forward to bringing our budget to the floor next week for consideration by the full House of Representatives under a rule that will address the concerns that have been raised about vital funding for our national security,” Price said in a statement after Thursday’s vote.
The drama came to a head Wednesday night as House leadership sought an amendment, according to reports, to not require the war funding money to be offset with cuts elsewhere, the main goal for the pro-military crowd. Price had assured leadership the committee votes were not there for the proposal. After much wrangling, he was proved correct, and the committee broke for the night without a plan to move forward.
Thursday morning, the Budget Committee quickly approved Price’s plan, but changes appear to be in store in the Boehner-controlled Rules Committee, which handles most legislation and dictates what amendments will be considered.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Gainesville Republican who serves on Rules, said he would lean toward Price’s approach but “we’ll wait and see what happens.”
“As a member of the military, there are things I think we could still do and not just simply, in some ways, throw money at the issue,” said Collins, an Air Force Reserve chaplain who served in Iraq. “We’ve got to have a strong military, but there’s a balance there. So I think Dr. Price tried to strike as good a balance as he could.”
The Senate set out on a different path, but the committee approved an amendment Thursday by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to increase the war funding to the higher House level. Graham told the committee that the world is far more dangerous than in 2011, when the budget caps were first passed into law.
Democrats objected.
“Don’t go through the process of budget gimmickry to add more money to the deficit without the serious debate we need,” said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
U.S. Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, also serves on the committee. He added an amendment that passed on party lines to bring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the domain of yearly congressional funding.
Created in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, the CFPB has long been targeted by Republicans, who refused to confirm a director for years. Price’s House budget had the same provision.
“Ultimately, I believe the CFPB should be dismantled, but an important first step is bringing it into the light for the American people to see its harmful effects on consumers,” Perdue said.
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