President Obama’s eagerness to increase federal spending does not seem to have been dampened by the Republican harmony displayed in passing budgets through both the House and Senate this week. In comments Thursday, the president indicated a hardline approach that could lead to even larger spending fights in coming months.
To Republicans, the budget blueprints — which preserve most of the sequester limits that have helped to rein in spending in recent years — served as the ideal rebuttal to Obama’s claim that the GOP was more interested in ideological warfare than governing.
Republican leaders even secured a long-elusive compromise on how Medicare pays doctors — an item on Obama’s wish list that could put more pressure on the White House to negotiate with an opposition Congress in other areas.
But when asked by the Washington Examiner whether the Republican budgets altered the president’s approach, a senior White House official replied, “Nope, not one bit.”
Such thinking means the GOP victories could be short-lived, with the White House and Republican lawmakers taking polar-opposite approaches on how to keep the government funded and pay for their respective priorities.
Obama still wants to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations, a non-starter with Republicans. And conservatives plan to fund their blueprint through steep cuts to social programs and repealing Obamacare. Both of these options appear equally unlikely as the president showcases a progressive streak in his final two years in office.
“It’s going to be hard to get anything really big done,” former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the Examiner. “There are smaller areas for opportunity, like the [‘doc fix’] but beyond that, not a whole lot.”
The budgets passed by the House and Senate are non-binding, essentially the opening round before both chambers attempt to agree on a joint plan, which they have not done in five years.
Lawmakers will soon find out whether their success in passing a budget carries over to looming fights over the Highway Trust Fund, which is set to expire in May, along with various appropriations bills and raging debates on taxes and trade, among other issues the White House has identified as areas for potential compromise.
Obama and Republicans still have major differences on defense funding, which is one of the few areas where both sides agree on the need for more spending.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday Obama would oppose Republican budget plans to increase the Pentagon’s funding while keeping the so-called sequester cuts in place for other agencies.
Republicans breathed a collective sigh of relief for avoiding a budget embarrassment, particularly after failing to use Department of Homeland Security funding as leverage to roll back Obama’s executive action on immigration. The president rolled his eyes.
“In what world do you put out a budget, then say, ‘You know what we forgot? Another deficit-busting tax cut for the top one-tenth of the top 1 percent of Americans,'” Obama mockingly said at an event in Alabama Thursday, which was meant to frame the GOP as beholden to the wealthy. “I don’t think our top economic priority should be helping a tiny number of Americans who are already doing extraordinarily well, and asking everybody else to foot the bill.
Conservative insiders argue that just because Obama is refusing to budge now on his agenda, doesn’t mean he’ll decline to compromise later on smaller items to finalize spending plans. But they acknowledge that a president increasingly in legacy mode sees little incentive in abandoning positions laid out in a defiant State of the Union address this year.
“There’s hope. I just don’t know how bright the light is,” said Stephen Northrup, a former senior Republican Senate health staffer. “I think the potential blowback for the president comes if and when lawmakers start moving appropriations bills. But it’s hard for me to see the president playing ball. There’s not a veto-proof majority.”
