For the new Republican Congress, the 2016 budget is where the rubber meets the road.
The GOP has 75 days to produce a fiscal 2016 budget resolution and move it through the House and Senate — and then less than six months to dispose of the dozen appropriations bills required to fund the government after Sept. 30. It’s a tall but critical task for a potentially fractious body of Republicans that stormed Capitol Hill intent on moving the needle rightward and proving they can govern.
“You always hear that saying: ‘the trains running on time’ — I mean, that’s our job,” Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., who serves on the Appropriations Committee, said Monday during a brief interview.
“Not passing a budget would let the world know how bad they are at governing,” a Republican lobbyist fretted.
Republicans on the Hill have declared President Obama’s proposed $4 trillion budget request dead on arrival. They oppose the administration’s myriad tax hikes and new taxpayer-subsidized government programs.
But to take Obama on and make the case that smaller governments and freer markets are better, Congressional Republicans have to pass their own budget resolution showing their own funding priorities.
That means at least 218 Republicans in the House, and 51 in the Senate, are going to have to agree on a plan.
A month in charge has delivered mixed results on that front. The GOP seamlessly moved legislation authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. But internal divisions prompted House Republicans to yank a bill to limit abortions to 20 weeks. Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are at odds over a must-pass bill to extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security by a Feb. 27 deadline. The potential for intraparty divisions over the budget is high.
House Republicans, with their ideologically gerrymandered districts, might prefer more aggressive spending cuts and entitlement reforms than Senate Republicans, many of whom are up for re-election in 2016 in blue states and swing territory. Austerity versus spending and increasing defense budgets versus maintaining the sequester cuts are just a few internal debates Republicans might have to resolve as they negotiate a budget.
If Republicans can’t come to terms, they’ll blow their biggest chance to confront Obama and push federal policy in a more conservative direction.
Passing a budget resolution facilitates the appropriations process, which offers the GOP its best opportunity to reduce government spending and roll back some of Obama’s regulatory schemes. For instance, the Republicans secured long-sought changes to the president’s financial reform law as a part of the “CRomnibus” funding bill that passed in December and keeps the government running through the end of the fiscal year.
Then there’s reconciliation.
Senate Democrats are powerless to filibuster a budget resolution, and passing a spending plan would allow Senate Republicans to use the reconciliation tool to clear related legislation with just 51 votes. So just as Senate Democrats in 2010 used reconciliation to sidestep a GOP filibuster and pass the final portions of the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans this year can use the same tool to move legislation gutting the law.
Obama is sure to veto that bill once it reaches his desk. But sending the president legislation that attacks Obamacare will finally allow congressional Republicans to have the clarifying debate they have craved since the monumental law passed, with only Democratic votes, five years ago. Republican operatives who monitor Capitol Hill describe reconciliation as the big carrot that will motivate the GOP to unify on a budget; they don’t want to miss out on this unique opportunity.
It’s also possible that Republicans might use reconciliation to pass other tax- and spending-related measures that Democrats oppose but Obama might be willing to sign.
“It’s an opportunity to get something done in the United States Senate with 51 votes instead of 60,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Judiciary Committee chairman and member of the Budget panel.
The Republicans have a few other things going for them.
If they agree on a budget resolution, Democrats can’t filibuster it. That allows Republicans to produce a document that reflects their values without accounting for Democratic concerns. Federal law protects budget resolutions from filibusters, and Republicans control 54 seats, three more than they need to pass one on their own. Additionally, Obama can’t veto it. Unlike appropriations bills, the budget resolution never goes to his desk.
Rather, the document determines the framework for the individual agency budgets, the details of which are to be filled in by the House and Senate appropriations committees.
The dirty work of the fiscal year 2016 budget process is set to occur over several months in the appropriations process, where the House and Senate appropriations committees pump out the dozen separate bills that actually set government spending levels and change law via policy riders. Republicans have until the Sept. 30 conclusion of fiscal 2015 to get it done.
The appropriations bills are subject to filibusters in the Senate and Obama’s signature. But Republicans believe a regular order process that involves the minority party at the committee level will help move legislation. First, however, they have to prove they can do the basics by passing a budget resolution out of both chambers.
“Appropriations is an important way for House and Senate Republicans to show they can govern while stepping back from the ‘who blinks first’ brinksmanship,” a former House GOP leadership aide said.
