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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010 Spending bills loomon Congress’s horizon
$1.1 trillion would keep government running; START vote possible
BY PAUL KANE With a massive bipartisan tax-
cut package edging closer to final agreement, Congress now will attempt to pass two major items before the end of the year: a $1.1 trillion bill to keep the gov- ernment running and a nuclear arms treaty. Both will be difficult to achieve
before the end of next week,when congressional leaders plan to go home. Senate Democrats are plan-
ning to put the 12 spending mea- sures that fund the government into one giant bill, a different approach from theirHouse coun- terparts and one that Republi- cans oppose. They also plan to bring the New START agreement to a vote even though some lead- ing Republicans in the Senate want to push it into next year. Republicans vowed Tuesday to
oppose efforts to package the dozen spending bills into one. But Senate Democrats are mov- ing ahead with such a proposal and House Democrats expect to pass an alternative spending plan by Wednesday that could add billions of dollars to key pro- grams.
Getting down to basics “That’s complete denial of the
message of the last election,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told re- porters, saying hewas“absolutely opposed” to a “pork-barrel” bill that led to large increases in federal spending. Instead of a comprehensive
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bill, Republicans prefer a stopgap measure that would keep funding level, or even decrease it, through September. They are hoping that PresidentObama—whodeclared “an end to the old way of doing business” when he reluctantly signed a similar 2009 omnibus spending bill just two months into his presidency — will urge Democrats to strip down the leg- islation to the most basic levels. Some Republicans, including
Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), their No. 2 leader, have suggested that the vote on New START wait until next year. But Democrats said they believe the bipartisan deal on taxes would leave enough time to approve the arms treaty with Russia next week. Senate Democrats also will
hold test votes Wednesday on several favored items that are expected to fail, including legisla- tion that would help children of illegal immigrants and a cost-of- living adjustment for Social Secu- rity beneficiaries. Increasingly in doubt is legisla-
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES
Senate Republicans, from left, John Thune (S.D.),MitchMcConnell (Ky.) and JonKyl (Ariz.) prepare to face reporters after their party’s caucus luncheon Tuesday on CapitolHill. The chamber must reach agreement with theHouse on a spending bill to continue to fund government operations.
tion that would repeal the mili- tary’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits gays from serving openly. The annual end-of-year crush
is standard fare inside the Capi- tol, with the government spend- ing bill almost always one of the final measures to be considered. What makes this year’s logjam
different is that not a single one of the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government has been approved. They are supposed to be passed individually and signed into law by Sept. 30, but political pressures from a public that grew skeptical of government spend- ing led Democrats to set them aside until after the November elections. Republicans did a similar
thing in 2006, when they were kicked out of the majority. They bypassed the appropriations pro- cess altogether, passing a so- called continuing resolution that kept government funding mostly at the previous year’s levels. Now, Senate Democrats find themselves orchestrating a com- plicated maneuver in a difficult effort to approve all 12 bills in one swoop. Rather than passing that mas-
sive legislation, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters that theHouse will take up a stopgap measure Wednesday, which would contin-
ue funding for most federal agen- cies at 2010 levels. However, Democratic and Re- publican aides said that there will be additional “anomaly” spend- ing items attached to that resolu-
tion.Those could include funding for such things as implementing portions of the Wall Street over- haul earlier this year and a na- tional broadband program that was started in the stimulus pro- gram approved in early 2009. As of lateTuesday, the Congres-
sional Budget Office still was estimating the cost of the legisla- tion.
Debate on pricey add-ons One outstanding issue is what
to do about building a second engine for the Joint Strike Fight- er. The engine dispute has turned into a heated lobbying battle between Pratt & Whitney, which is constructing the first engine for the Pentagon jet, and General Electric and Rolls-Royce, which are building the second one. Despite objections from De-
fense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who views the second engine as wasteful spending, a bipartisan collection of lawmakers has kept it alive. Supporters read the lan- guage stating that programs shall be continued at 2010 levels to suggest that the second engine, which received $465 million last fiscal year, should continue in
production. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a po-
tential GOP presidential candi- date, criticized this approach and instead called for a “clean” stop- gap bill without the add-ons. He said the spending legislation must recognize that “we get our fiscal house in order.” House Democratic leaders
think they have the votes to send their spending plan to the Senate with the tacked-on items. Oncethat happens, Sen. Daniel
Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, plans to swap in the legislation that combines all 12 spending bills. It also would include thou- sands of line-item measures, known as earmarks, that Repub- licans have vowed to eliminate next year because they think they are wasteful spending often in- serted by a single lawmaker. Several Senate Democrats de-
clared their opposition to ear- marks last week, so Inouye needs to find a handful of votes from Republicans. The likeliest targets are retiring GOP senators who might see this legislation as their last chance to deliver for their states. If those votes do not material-
ize, the Senate is expected to take up the House version of the spending bill, but not without a battle.
kanep@washpost.com Obama calls liberal critics ‘sanctimonious’
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BY PERRY BACON JR. AND SCOTTWILSON
Before President Obama’s
Tuesday news conference, it was clear that his willingness to com- promise with Republicans on ex- tending George W. Bush-era tax cuts had left many liberal Demo- crats angry and dismayed. By the time the president stepped away from the WhiteHouse podium 32 minutes later, it was equally clear the feeling was mutual. Obama’s tone was alternately
defensive and fiery.He dismissed his Democratic critics as “sancti- monious” and obsessed with staking out a “purist position.”He said they hold views so unrealis- tic that, by their measure of suc- cess, “we will never get anything done.” “I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there who, if they
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look at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised,” he said. “Take a tally,” the president challenged members of his party, seeming more riled by their criti- cism than by the opposition’s. “Look at what I promised during the
campaign.There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”
The remarks — along with the rebellion taking shape among lib- erals intent on letting the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans ex- pire—laid bare the fault line that for two years has separated Obama from some Democratic lawmakers and from the part of the party base that press secre- tary Robert Gibbs once dismissed as the “professional left.” On Tuesday, Obama’s targets
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also included the GOP senators who insist that the tax cuts on household income above $250,000 remain in place. As he described his inability to get those lawmakers to “budge,” and his unwillingness to allow the cuts to expire for all Americans on schedule at year’s end, Obama invoked an unusual analogy — one that is unlikely to help the bipartisan outreach efforts to whichhecommitted himself after his party’s drubbing in the mid- term elections. “I’ve said before that I felt that
the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high- end tax cuts,” he said. “I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hos- tage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.”
Acceding to the demands of
hostage-takers is generally viewed as unwise because it risks encouraging future hostage-tak- ing. Obama’s Democratic critics fear that is precisely the cue Republican leaders will take from this standoff—threaten this pres- ident and win. At the same time, Obama used
the news conference to present himself as above the political fight. Speaking angrily at times, Obama said on several occasions that his“numberone priority is to do what’s right for the American people” and protect what re- mains of a halting economic re- covery. He raised the threat of shrinking paychecksandmillions of unemployed Americans with- out government insurance bene- fits, which would be renewed as part of the far-reaching package. “This is not an abstract fight,”
he said several times. Obama himself is on the next
ballot, in 2012, and his political challenge will be to win back independent voters who aban- doned Democrats in the midterm elections and not alienate his base in the process. The two groups have different
and sometimes conflicting inter- ests — the first favoring compro- mise over partisan conflict, the second angry and eager to undo policies established during the Bush presidency. That tension is at the center of the inside-the- Beltway battle Obama joined by striking a deal with Republicans that would extend tax cuts for all income levels. In a nod to the sentiments of
his base, he said he would fight in two years to end the top-tier tax cuts when they would be set to expire under the deal. Referring to Republicans, he said tax cuts for the wealthy remain “their Holy Grail.” He added, however, “a long
political fight that carried over into next year might have been
good politics, but it would have been a bad deal for the economy and it would be a bad deal for the American people.” Obama criticized congressio-
nal Democrats for not holding a vote on the Bush tax cuts before the midterm elections, which he said would have served to “crys- tallize the positions of the two parties.” Polls show that most Americans favor allowing the top-tier tax cuts to expire. And he complained that the
fight over the tax cuts amounted to “the public option debate all over again,” a reference to the liberal criticism he received at the time over his inability to secure a government-run insurance op- tion in his health-care overhaul. “So I pass a signature piece of
legislation where we finally get health-care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for a hundred years,” Obama began, “but be- cause there was a provision in there that they didn’t get that would have affectedmaybe a cou- ple million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the poten- tial for lower premiums for a hundred million people, that somehow that was a sign of weak- ness and compromise.” The result of such a inflexible approach, he said, is that “people will have the satisfaction of hav- ing a purist position and no victories for the American peo- ple.”
Defending his own tactics, he
invoked his race, something he rarely does in political discus- sions. “This country was founded on
compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door at this country’s founding,” he said. “And, you know, if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a union.”
baconp@washpost.com wilsons@washpost.com
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