How Republicans avoided a budget revolt – for a day, anyway

Republican deficit hawks were prepared to revolt against the House leadership's budget plans, but an inventive maneuver saved the day. 

|
Cliff Owen/AP/File
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Price (R) of Georgia speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington last week. He was instrumental in finding a budget compromise among Republicans.

Republicans were rescued from embarrassing House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio (again) thanks to a little listening and a parliamentary maneuver known as “Queen of the Hill.”

Just last week, it was widely speculated that Republicans who wanted steep budget cuts would deal Speaker Boehner a defeat when the GOP budget resolution came up for a vote Wednesday. The speaker would again be shown as unable to tame his unruly caucus.

But in the end, House Republicans passed a budget blueprint 228 to 199. No Democrats voted for the plan, which would balance the budget within 10 years by repealing the Affordable Care Act and making deep cuts in social welfare spending.

So why didn't hardliners revolt?

In part, they may have learned from their failed attempt last month to put restrictions on the president's immigration executive action. Both the House and Senate passed a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without restrictions.

After this defeat, a newly formed group of conservatives known as the Freedom Caucus met to come up with a plan of attack for the budget, according to Politico.

Eventually, they proposed to House and Budget Committee leaders that votes be allowed on more than one GOP budget plan. The one with the most votes is the one that's adopted. In House parlance, that's called a "Queen of the Hill" process.

The beauty of that solution, Freedom Caucus member Rep. John Fleming (R) of Louisiana told reporters Wednesday, is that it is transparent, and "we all get to vote for the budget we want." He was impressed with the receptivity of leadership to the caucus's views.

The choices allowed the most fiscally conservative Republicans to back the most stringent budget plan (theirs would trim the deficit by $7.1 trillion over six years).

It also allowed Republicans to back a plan that would reduce the deficit by $5.5 trillion in a decade, but increase the military’s war account by $94 billion, some of which was offset.

Defense hawks could back a third plan that topped up the war account by another $2 billion, without offsets. That’s the plan that was backed by leadership and which eventually was adopted.

With this deal, all Republicans could declare victory. At least for a day.

Much harder will be agreeing on actual spending. Wednesday's GOP budget resolution does not have the force of law. It is simply a vision statement. Translating that vision into spending bills that must pass both the House and Senate and be signed by the president is another matter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How Republicans avoided a budget revolt – for a day, anyway
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0325/How-Republicans-avoided-a-budget-revolt-for-a-day-anyway
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe