As a fiscal compromise cleared a U.S. Senate hurdle Tuesday, Congress lurched toward a milestone it had not achieved in four-and-a-half years: passing a budget.
Georgia Republican Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss both were in favor in a 67-33 vote that paved the way for final passage, likely Wednesday, of the bipartisan accord. It replaces $62 billion in across-the-board spending cuts over the next two years with $85 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years, including changes in federal pensions and hikes in airline fees.
The vote followed last week's overwhelming House approval of the deal struck by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to bridge the two chambers' budgets. The accord sets spending levels on security and non-security programs through 2015, while Congress still must pass appropriation bills to color in the details.
“This budget deal is a necessary and crucial step towards a functioning Congress,” Chambliss said in a floor speech. He thanked Murray and Ryan for their work “to end this chapter of political disagreement.”
The vote provides a détente in the ongoing fiscal warfare that has characterized a divided government that has gone years without formally setting a consensus budget. In the past two years, “sequestration” cuts to spending have acted as a de facto budget.
But those cuts – spread equally over security and non-security programs – were designed to force lawmakers to agree to a less blunt alternative to tackle programs that are growing automatically. The military furloughed civilian employees across the country this year and warned that another round of cuts next year would do serious harm to readiness.
Chambliss said he was urged by the Pentagon and intelligence officials over the weekend to support the deal, to avert more cuts.
The Ryan-Murray deal does not reform the tax code or make big changes to the massive Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs that form the bulk of federal spending.
But Chambliss said resolving spending fights around “discretionary” programs will make big reforms easier, raising the prospect of an elusive bipartisan “grand bargain” to reduce long-term deficits. Chambliss has worked on such a solution for years without success, though he said a vote to raise the debt ceiling early next year could provide impetus to attach big reforms.
Even as he praised the budget, Chambliss said he’s working to reverse a provision affecting military pensions before it kicks in at the end of 2015. Several Republicans refused to back the deal because it cut back cost-of-living increases for military members who collect pensions before age 62.
Most military pensions kick in after 20 years of service, and many personnel go on to other careers.
“Many Georgians have served with honor in our military and although the changes in their cost-of-living increase may appear insignificant on paper in this bill, this is real money promised to those who put their life in harm’s way in defense of this nation,” Chambliss said.
Isakson also said he wanted to work on a “solution” to the pension issue, but he pointed out that the cuts are replaced when military retirees turn 62 and noted big deficit reduction is never easy.
“We’re going to have to deal with an awful lot of painful subjects in the years ahead to deal with our actuarial liability in the out years, which is what’s killing us with the debt and the deficit,” Isakson said.
This deal had its share of critics from the right, including prominent conservative pressure groups, who said it gets rid of real spending cuts in favor of fee hikes and elusive and insufficient future deficit reduction. But House conservatives – in a rare move – bucked those groups last week, as most of Georgia’s House Republicans backed the deal.
The Senate Republican “no” votes came from a mix of military backers concerned about the pensions, the chamber’s arch-conservatives, those who face primary challengers next year or senators who are contemplating a presidential run in 2016. Georgia was the only Deep South with two senators backing the deal.
"We'll spend more now, we'll grow the government now, but ultimately those cuts will never materialize," said Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican who has a primary challenge from Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
But as in the House, their concerns were overwhelmed with support from senators willing to declare an imperfect victory.
“This bipartisan bill takes the first steps toward rebuilding our broken budget process,” Murray said in a floor speech. “And hopefully, toward rebuilding our broken Congress. We’ve spent far too long here scrambling to fix artificial crises instead of working together to solve the big problems we all know we need to address.”
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