'There are only tough decisions left,' says Rep. Rob Woodall. GOP leaves debt accord in dust

Moving right and bleeding moderate votes, Republicans narrowly won House approval Thursday of their plan to shift tens of billions from poverty programs to protect the Pentagon from automatic cuts under the August debt accords.

The long-term unemployed, who have swelled the food stamp rolls, are among the most vulnerable, together with single-mother households and working-class immigrant families. Depressed swing states like Florida would begin to feel the pinch in late summer, and the 167-page bill carries with it big implications for the November elections and the fiscal crisis facing Congress in the weeks after.


Inside the House, the 218-199 vote placated party conservatives and minutes later helped the leadership win passage of the first of the 2013 annual appropriations bills covering law enforcement and science agencies.

But among the 16 Republican “nays” on the spending cuts were significantly more GOP moderates – lawmakers who had remained loyal in the budget debate little more than a month ago.

Indeed, some of the same House cuts have been opposed in the past by the party’s young Republican political star, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, often mentioned as a potential running mate of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. And by moving so far to the right, the House risks making it more likely — not less — that the January sequester could happen.

There is growing sentiment among Senate Democrats — reflected in comments this week by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — that the party should hang tough behind the Budget Control Act and gamble that strong medicine is needed to jolt the political system back toward the center and compromise.

“I’m not about to walk away from that agreement — that’s a bill we passed,” Reid told reporters Thursday. “The president feels the same way.”

House Democrats — all standing for reelection in November — are typically more skittish. But in a debate on the House floor, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) told his colleagues that the Republican bill “actually makes sequestration look good.”

“The bill before us would create a government where there would be no conscience,” McGovern said. “It is outrageous. It takes my breath away.”

Building on the March budget resolution, the measure continues what has become an aggressive Republican rewrite of last summer’s agreements both in terms of annual spending caps and now the sequester mechanism. Nondefense appropriations in 2013 already face cuts of $27 billion from what was anticipated under the Budget Control Act, and the new measure adds a second round of savings, culled from President Barack Obama’s signature initiatives as well as core benefit programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and the child tax credit.

The narrowness of this approach — shunning any cuts from defense or tax shelters — is a worry for party moderates.

“I am one who thinks you have to put everything on the table,” Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) told POLITICO. A representative of Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) echoed that sentiment: “We must put everything on the table.”

Romney can’t ignore the action as he tries to position himself for the fall campaign. And recalling his own days in the Michigan state Senate, Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) said it was a far cry from when he had worked in a bipartisan way with Romney’s father, the late Gov. George Romney.

“I directly engaged in give and take and negotiated final legislation with Gov. George Romney, resulting in legislation that passed on a bipartisan basis,” Levin said. “Today the radicalization of the Republican Party would make that impossible.”

Republicans countered that they were at least trying to deal with the debt crisis, while the Senate has sat idle, too divided to even try to debate a budget.

“There are only tough decisions left,” Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) responded to McGovern. And Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the GOP should get credit for trying “to govern” rather than surrender to mechanical cuts.

“If we can’t have a civil debate about how to slow the growth of spending around here,” Ryan said, “then we will never get this under control.”

“We have the highest poverty rates in a generation. These programs aren’t working,” he said. “Let’s fix them.”

But few of the savings really represent “fixes” of what are often complicated questions about who should be eligible for benefits. At the same time, the GOP’s single-minded focus on protecting defense is so great that the bill even exempts the Pentagon from a small sliver of $19 million in mandatory savings demanded by the sequester mechanism — while Medicare providers would still be affected.

The whole spectacle has been overshadowed by the gay marriage debate in Washington this week. But a final scoring of the budget package prepared by the Congressional Budget Office is telling.

According to the CBO, the plan would reduce the deficit by about $237 billion over a decade. But in the short term, at least, the bill means more red ink this year. And the long-term savings are less than a quarter of the added $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction that had been promised last summer.

Republicans would concede, too, that it is a temporary patch. Only the first round of the automatic spending cuts in January is affected, meaning a new Congress at this same time next year will be faced with the same crisis all over again.

Breaking down the sequester itself, the Budget Control Act now requires that an estimated $110 billion be cut in early January, the first installment of the promised $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The law divides the reductions evenly between defense and non-defense programs with about $98 billion coming from discretionary appropriations and $12 billion from various “mandatory” benefit programs such as Medicare and farm subsidies.

The Republican bill now would leave these $12 billion in cuts from mandatory programs in place — with the exception of defense. And the real focus of the rewrite is on the appropriations side of the ledger, where the Pentagon faces a $55 billion, or 10 percent, cut.

The House plan would shield the Pentagon from any reduction and, in fact, holds out the promise of an $8 billion increase for defense above the caps set last summer. Domestic programs would also share in some of the protection, but given the cuts already ordered under Ryan’s plan, the sums at stake are far less.

The White House is already threatening vetoes of the spending bills now moving forward under the reduced allocations ordered by the GOP’s budget. And the $51.5 billion bill approved Thursday is a classic case of floor managers working together in a bipartisan fashion, only to see a largely partisan vote at the finish line.

Covering the Departments of Justice and Commerce as well as major science agencies, the measure reflects a $1.6 billion cut to 2012 funding but more importantly is $731 million below Obama’s request — based on the August framework.

As a result, NASA and NOAA each lost money to law enforcement accounts during the course of the two-day floor debate. And while the Legal Services Corp. survived attacks, its funding remains well below the $402 million requested by the administration.

Through it all, Wolf, as the Republican floor manager, worked easily with Pennsylvania Rep. Chaka Fattah, his Democratic counterpart. But on final passage, 247-163, the two parties split — a sour end to a trying week.