Tim Scott says the balanced-budget amendment is 'is a big deal' to freshmen. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Frosh tout clout, risk being left out

Bolstered by its continuing clout in the debt ceiling standoff, the House GOP freshman class is vowing to keep pushing its agenda even if it complicates life for Speaker John Boehner — and even in the face of predictions of fiscal calamity if no deal gets done.

Far from declaring victory after Boehner’s dramatic reversal on pursuing a go-big debt package Saturday night, the freshmen are keeping up their insistence that the party sticks to its principles of major cuts to entitlement spending and no tax increases.


Case in point: the freshmen’s insistence on having a rigid version of a balanced-budget amendment attached to the debt limit. The idea got little play during the Biden group talks, but several freshmen insisted that they won’t vote for a deal that doesn’t include passage of the amendment — even though the current version of the balanced-budget bill might not even clear the House.

“The balanced-budget amendment is probably one of the things that I find most consistently members of the freshman class as well as members of the Republican Study Committee are pushing,” said South Carolina rookie Rep. Tim Scott, a member of the House GOP’s elected leadership committee. “It is a big deal to the freshman class.”

The group — a heavily tea-party-tinged contingent of 87 newly elected Republican members — is widely credited with forcing Boehner’s hand and causing him to abandon talks on a $4 trillion debt limit package, the “grand bargain” that both the speaker and President Barack Obama initially sought.

But conversations with a number of the freshman Republicans show that their influence on Boehner’s decision did not take the form of a dramatic showdown, marked by clandestine meetings and big clashes with leadership.

To get their way, it didn’t need to be. The power exercised by the freshman class that gave Boehner the speaker’s gavel is more subtle than that. Boehner knows the trouble they could cause for him. But it remains an open question whether the freshmen will ever be willing to support a bipartisan compromise that might actually pass — or whether the members run the risk of marginalizing themselves by staking out a position that makes it impossible to vote for any final deal.

It’s a dynamic that highlights the difficulties that Boehner has faced since the beginning of his speakership: He owes his power in part to these freshmen and the tea party movement, but he doesn’t seem confident that he can marshal their votes into legislative breakthroughs.

The freshmen are publicly projecting confidence in their leaders — for now.

“Boehner and [Majority Leader Eric] Cantor share our opinion,” said Illinois freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger. “They do realize that we were sent to Washington, D.C., to cut spending and grow the economy, not raise taxes.”

That position leads to the strong freshman support for the balanced-budget amendment — even though it has not been the central component of either the deficit reduction talks led by Vice President Joe Biden or those now taking place among Boehner, Obama and other top lawmakers from both chambers. But it’s come up repeatedly at listening sessions with freshmen and other conservative members, and Republican leaders say they’re supportive of the measure to be voted on.

A different version of a balanced-budget amendment passed the House in 1995 with 300 votes — including those of Democrats such as Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and it came within one vote in the Senate. The language of that bill was reintroduced this year, with more than a dozen Democratic co-sponsors. But Republicans this time around have proposed a more stringent version of the amendment, one that would require a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes. This language is a nonstarter for Democrats.

The freshman backers of the balanced-budget amendment aren’t worried about losing votes with the tougher version.

“[Democrats] are going to have to decide if they want a debt ceiling increase and a balanced-budget amendment, or do they want neither,” said Alabama freshman Rep. Mo Brooks, one of the balanced-budget amendment proponents.

“This is Obama’s deficit. It is Obama’s debt ceiling vote. If the Democrats want the consequences of a failure of America’s credit, well then they will get it, if there is not a constitutional amendment of substance or large enough spending cuts to make a real dent in our budget deficit,” he said.

Democrats are also starting to realize that Boehner hasn’t figured out a way to pass bills with just his members and get something that can also pass a Democratic Senate. Some predict that Boehner will have to ditch his freshmen and rely on moderate Democrats in a final deal.

“John Boehner does not have 218 votes to fund the economy of the United States — not for the government and not for the debt,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “… You can’t pass anything at this point without close to 100 Democratic votes.”

Indeed, Republican freshmen remain skeptical of any larger deficit reduction deal that included new revenues — or anything that can be possibly construed as a tax increase.

The freshmen believe Boehner knows better than to sell them a deal with a whiff of new tax revenue.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said the conference got “no indication” that the speaker was ever considering support for tax increases.

“There would have been a big uproar in the freshman class. But what the class is talking about more importantly that is not getting through is how important the balanced-budget amendment is,” he said. “The balanced-budget amendment has to be a part of the package.”

The first that many freshmen heard of a $4 trillion deficit reduction proposal — including new tax revenues — was a class meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last month, who broadly introduced a plan with $2 trillion in spending cuts, $1 trillion in savings on interest and $1 trillion in tax revenues. Freshman left that meeting frustrated with Geithner’s suggestion that revenues be a part of the deal.

Since then, they’ve been suspicious about any debt deal that could ostensibly raise $1 trillion in revenue and not include tax increases.

Some freshmen still feel wary because of the most recent deal that Boehner cut — the spending bill that averted a government shutdown but fell well short of a goal of $100 billion in spending cuts.

“There’s no question that those who feel burned previously would want to see a deal in hand in time to study the deal,” Scott said.

The rookies don’t want to be kept in the dark on deal making this time around.

“It’s fair to say everybody has learned from that experience,” Brooks said.

Lankford said one of the challenges leaders face now is to reach a solution with enough time for their rank and file to process it and commit to a final deal.

“The issue really is working out a deal that everyone can read, process and understand that this is not raising taxes — it’s dealing with loopholes. If you’re talking about trying to do that in two to three weeks, it’s going to be really difficult to do, to sign on to something they could agree with,” Lankford said.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced both the balanced-budget amendment with the two-thirds requirement to raise taxes and another bill that, like the 1995 bill, requires only a simple majority to raise revenues. Some members say they’re ready to push that version if the first one fails.

“The reason the freshmen were elected was to fundamentally change the ways of Washington,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho). “The only way we can do it is with a balanced-budget amendment. So we need to be open to what kind of balanced-budget amendment can pass.”