Republicans are split over whether to send the bill to conference with the House. | AP Photos Senate GOP divided on budget

Senate Republicans disagreed sharply on Tuesday over whether to send the upper chamber’s budget to conference with the House.

The unusually high-profile disagreement pitted GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine against Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, the latter two siding with Senate GOP leadership against sending the budget to conference.


“If my colleagues on this side of the aisle think that we are helping our cause as fiscal conservatives by blocking going to a conference on the budget, which every family in America has to be on, because of certain requirements that they demand, then we are not helping ourselves with the American people at all,” McCain said.

At the root of the intraparty dispute is a demand by a group of conservative senators that a budget deal struck between both chambers exclude an increase in the debt ceiling.

With the impending need to raise the limit, Senate leadership won’t rule out raising the debt ceiling as part of a budget deal. And as the White House tries to use the budget and debt ceiling negotiations to strike a grand bargain on the deficit, there is a strong likelihood that any possible agreement will include multiple elements.

Negotiations between Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have yet to produce a deal to go to conference, so Senate Democrats have gone public urging “regular order” in the budget process, including a conference.

Democrats see this as a winning fight, arguing that Republicans are obstructionist. After years of complaining that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget, Republicans approved a deal early in the year to raise the debt limit on the condition that the other chamber pass a budget, which it did.

Earlier this month, several Republicans in the Senate began pushing back against leadership, including McCain who called it “incomprehensible” that the budget conference is being blocked.

The Tuesday tussle on the floor began when Murray rose to once again ask that the budget go to conference.

Paul objected to the motion. In the past few weeks, those objecting included Cruz, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

Cruz has been working to paint the fight over going to conference as about the debt ceiling, arguing that a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit could be included in a budget crafted by the conference committee. In that case, the increase would need only 50 votes instead of 60 votes, which Cruz argued would obstruct his power as a senator to oppose an increase in the debt ceiling.

Paul and Cruz insisted that a provision be included in the conference agreement to prevent the debt ceiling from being included in the deal.

“The debt ceiling vote [should not] be a separate vote and that it should not be stuck in the dead of the night in a conference committee with very few people selected by very few people,” Paul said.”We have a big party on our side that can include people with different opinions, some who are very concerned about the debt ceiling and the direction of our country and some concerned about the debt so much, so our resilience will not flag.”

McCain and Collins rose to oppose members of their own party.

“I would point out to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that for four years — four years — we complained about the fact that the majority leader, who I see here on the floor, would refuse to bring a budget to the floor of the United States Senate,” McCain said.

He pointed out that the Senate did in fact pass a budget, after voting until nearly 5 a.m. (calling it “a tiring experience at my age”).

“So what do we keep doing?” McCain said. “What do we on my side of the aisle keep doing? We don’t want a budget unless — unless — we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented.”

Collins took to the floor to agree with McCain.

“Isn’t it true that the people that the conference would be held with on the other side of the Capitol happen to be a majority of our party?” McCain asked Collins. “So we don’t trust the majority party on the other side of the aisle to come to conference and not hold to the fiscal discipline that we want to see happen? Isn’t that a little bit bizarre?”

“It certainly is a little ironic, at the least,” Collins responded.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) had objected to sending the budget to conference.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Nick Gass @ 05/21/2013 07:32 PM Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) had objected to sending the budget to conference.