The House is inching along on a fiscal 2017 budget proposal that could begin the tough task of tackling the growth of entitlement spending.
There is no guarantee Republicans will be able to come to an agreement on a spending blueprint by an April 15 deadline.
Conservatives have been lamenting a 2015 bipartisan deal that sets next year’s spending levels at $1.07 trillion. That accord raised spending levels for next year by $30 billion above mandatory caps, thus eliminating the savings long sought by conservative lawmakers who ran on promises to reduce the nation’s deficit.
The disagreement has thwarted plans by Republican leaders to advance a budget proposal by February in order to accommodate the shorter congressional schedule that is typical in an election year.
House Budget Committee aides confirmed that hearings won’t begin until March at the earliest, though they insist the budget process remains ahead of schedule.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers are poised to oppose the plan, so House Budget Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., appears to have written a compromise to attract their support.
The deal, according to House Budget Committee aides, would keep the top-line discretionary spending level at $1.07 trillion, but would achieve savings on the mandatory side of the budget, which includes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and welfare spending.
The proposal doesn’t specify how it would reduce mandatory spending. That decision would be left to lawmakers, who would have to choose whether to make reductions via spending legislation or through a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes for passage in the Senate, rather than the usual 60 votes.
According to Budget Committee aides, the options were written by rank-and-file lawmakers, rather than the GOP leadership, and followed numerous listening sessions conducted by Price.
The collaborative process is part of a new management approach Speaker Paul Ryan promised when he took over last year, which has helped thaw the icy relationship between the most conservative House faction and its GOP leadership.
“This proposal enjoys the overwhelming support of the committee members, and the chairman looks forward to sharing it with the broader conference as we continue moving this process forward,” House Budget Committee spokesman William Allison said.
But not all conservatives are cheering.
The House Freedom Caucus, which comprises dozens of conservatives, is still pushing for reduced spending that would help cut the nation’s $19 trillion debt and $100 billion deficit.
Freedom Caucus Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, “is pushing for a strong conservative budget,” his spokesman Darin Miller told the Washington Examiner.
Outside conservative groups are particularly wary of the deal because it doesn’t guarantee significant spending cuts.
“Beware unenforceable promises” on the budget, the conservative Heritage Action warned last week.
Heritage Action spokesman Dan Holler noted that House lawmakers used the reconciliation process last year to try to gut Obamacare, but ended up with a measure that left a lot of the healthcare law intact, including costly subsidies. The legislation was sent to President Obama, who vetoed it.
Holler wants conservatives to instead put forward a 2017 blueprint that does not exceed mandatory budget caps.
“The elevated funding level has no business being in a conservative Republican budget blueprint,” Heritage declared in a memo calling on the House to pass “a conservative budget.”
Democrats are spinning the GOP negotiations as evidence of the kind of party infighting that has plagued House Republicans since dozens of conservatives were elected in 2010 and eventually forced out former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
“The speaker is already running into budget problems from the same radicals who gave his predecessor headaches,” said a memo from the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “While the speaker pledged an end to dysfunctional House Republican leadership, all the American people are seeing is more of the same.”
Neither the House nor the Senate must pass a budget. Instead, lawmakers can designate a spending level and simple craft appropriations measures that adhere to the limit.
But Ryan, who is a former Budget Committee chair, said he is pushing lawmakers to back a formal spending blueprint in order to ensure smooth passage of individual spending bills.
“Every year, there are machinations and concerns about aspects of the budget,” Ryan told reporters. “We’re going to have a family conversation. Our members are going to be given all the options and all the data and all the evidence and all of the choices in front of them.”
