WASHINGTON — The House voted early Saturday to slash more than $60 billion from the federal budget over the next seven months, showing how powerfully the grass-roots, antispending fervor of the November elections is driving the new Republican majority’s efforts to shrink the size and scope of government.
The vote, in favor of deep reductions in domestic programs, foreign aid and even some military projects, put the two parties on a path to a quick succession of showdowns over the deficit and the nation’s accumulated and growing debt. The debate has been made all the more bitter by long-simmering political feuds over health care, energy, social policy and a fundamental divide over the proper role of government.
The vote, 235 to 189, was a victory for the large, boisterous class of fiscally conservative Republican freshmen that is fiercely determined to change the ways of Washington and that forced party leaders to pursue far bigger cuts than originally planned.
With Congress on a weeklong Presidents’ Day recess, lawmakers will return with just four days to agree on a temporary extension of the stop-gap measure now financing the government. The Democratic-controlled Senate has signaled that it will not consider anything approaching the scale of cuts approved by the House, setting up a standoff that each side has warned could lead to a shutdown of the federal government early next month.
The vote was also the opening salvo in what is likely to be a long, bitter clash of philosophical ideas about fiscal policy on Capitol Hill, in statehouses around the country and in the 2012 presidential campaign, as Republicans repudiate the liberal, Keynesian strategies the Obama administration has relied on to navigate through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
In Washington, the fight in the weeks ahead will focus on paying for government operations through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and the need within the next few months to raise the federal debt ceiling. But the push by Republicans for spending cuts and new austerity is already shaking state capitals, including Madison, Wis., and Columbus, Ohio, where labor unions have begun protesting efforts to reduce benefits and weaken their collective bargaining rights.
The House approved its spending measure in the predawn darkness on Saturday after four days and nights of free-wheeling floor debate — a veritable ultra-marathon of legislating in which hundreds of amendments were put forward. Republican leaders lost votes on some of those amendments, in what they said was a testament to their commitment to allow a more open legislative process than their recent predecessors.
Republicans seemed to grow more excited as the final vote neared shortly after 4:30 a.m.
“We have a mandate from the American people to cut spending,” declared Representative Judy Biggert, Republican of Illinois.
Immediately after the vote, the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said in a statement, “This week, for the first time in many years, the people’s House was allowed to work its will — and the result was one of the largest spending cuts in American history.” Mr. Boehner added, “We will not stop here in our efforts to cut spending, not when we’re broke and Washington’s spending binge is making it harder to create jobs.”
Just three Republicans opposed the bill, while all 186 Democrats present voted against it. The Republicans who opposed the spending package were Representatives John Campbell of California and Jeff Flake of Arizona, both of whom had advocated for even bigger reductions, and Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, who often disagrees with his party.
The Republicans’ plan would quickly impose sharp spending reductions in nearly every area of government. But Republicans will not have long to bask in the glory of their win, and their bill has virtually no chance of becoming law in its current form. President Obama and Senate Democrats say the cuts would harm the fragile economic recovery, and the White House had threatened to veto the bill even before it was approved. The Democrats say Mr. Obama’s budget proposal, which calls for a five-year freeze in many spending areas, is a more reasonable approach. But Republicans have rejected it as insufficient.
As House Republicans laid down their marker in the spending fight, it went unremarked on by the White House. On Saturday morning, Mr. Obama went to a local community center to be a guest basketball coach, and there was no immediate comment from the administration on the vote.
The stopgap measure now financing the government expires on March 4. And with Congress in recess, party leaders concede that there is not enough time to forge a deal and that a short-term extension will be needed to avert a shutdown of the government.
But with the tone in the House growing more strident over the four days of debate, and politically charged amendments dominating the action on Friday, lawmakers and Washington at large have begun to face the possibility that even a temporary accord will be difficult to achieve.
Mr. Boehner has said he will not agree to a short-term extension without added cuts. Democrats, meanwhile, have not shown any willingness to give ground, apparently betting that Republicans will be held responsible for a shutdown as they were in 1995 in a standoff with the Clinton administration.
The House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, late Friday night put forward a temporary extension of the stopgap measure that would maintain expenditures as they are now, generally at 2010 levels, and avert a shutdown through March 31. But Republicans quickly dismissed it.
Democrats, for weeks, have warned that Republicans were risking a shutdown by showing no flexibility in the spending debate.
“Closing our government would mean our men and women in uniform wouldn’t receive their paychecks and veterans would lose critical benefits,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference earlier on Friday. “Seniors wouldn’t receive their Social Security checks, and essential functions from food safety inspection to airport security could come to a halt.”
Aides to the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, sought to play down the possibility of a stalemate that would shutter the government but accused Democrats of rooting for that outcome.
Mr. McConnell, however, showed no willingness to consider Ms. Pelosi’s proposed temporary extension. “Freezing in place the current unsustainable spending levels is simply unacceptable,” he said in a statement.
Even without a government shutdown, there were warnings that the Republican cuts could hobble federal agencies. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, charged with carrying out a sweeping new financial regulation law, will end up with $25 million less than last year, which was before the law was adopted.
In a letter to employees on Thursday, the Social Security Administration warned of potential furloughs “given the potential of reduced Congressional appropriations for the remainder of the fiscal year.”
The cuts even hit some programs that had support among Republican leaders, including an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The House voted to cancel the engine, achieving $450 million in short-term savings.
Up to the end, the Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc, continued to push for even bigger cuts, putting forward an amendment on Friday to slice $22 billion more. That amendment was defeated, as senior Republicans, including the majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, and veteran members of the Appropriations Committee, teamed with Democrats to hit the brakes.
But flush with enthusiasm on the fourth long day of debate, House Republicans on Friday easily approved amendments to the spending package that would deny government financing for Planned Parenthood, block money for the Democrats’ big health care overhaul and bar new regulation of certain greenhouse gases.
The amendment to deny government funds to Planned Parenthood was put forward by Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana. It was approved by a vote of 240 to 185.
Ms. Pelosi, a supporter of abortion rights, angrily denounced the vote as a camouflaged effort by Republicans to prevent Americans from engaging in family planning, which she said would actually undermine the Republicans’ larger goal by leading to an increase in elective abortions.
At least six amendments were approved to block federal agencies from carrying out the new health care law or crucial components of the law.
For Republican freshmen, however, the health care law offers a potentially sobering lesson about American democracy: after countless hours of drafting and floor debate, the health care bill Mr. Obama signed last year was the one written and approved by the Senate.
In much the same way, the spending measure being debated so feverishly on the House floor has virtually no chance of becoming the law.
Just as the Senate ultimately controlled the health care debate, so too will it control crucial negotiations in the current spending fight. Senate Republicans have said they support the overall goals of their House counterparts but have not committed to making identical cuts, and Democrats have a majority in the chamber.
In an understated reminder of his chamber’s role in the process, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, issued a statement expressing a desire for compromise.
“It is my sincere hope that all the parties will remain reasonable as we seek to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year,” he said. “Neither house of Congress is in a position to dictate terms to the other, so I remain hopeful that we will come to a sensible accommodation.”
NYTimes
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