Senate Republicans and Democrats Wednesday rejected dueling proposals to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, sending both parties back to the negotiating table with only a week left to work out a compromise. The Senate voted 56-44, mostly along party lines, to defeat a Republican proposal to fund the final 28 weeks of the fiscal year, cutting $57 billion along the way. Lawmakers then voted 58 to 42 to kill a Democratic spending measure that cut only $4.7 billion. Democrats had predicted some moderate GOP lawmakers would defect and vote against the steep Republican cuts, but the GOP mostly held together. That suggests that any future compromise will require big concessions from Democrats, who may be forced to accept cuts much deeper than those they proposed Wednesday.
Republican moderates including Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, all voted for the GOP bill, which slashes spending across dozens of agencies and eliminates funding for programs like Planned Parenthood, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.
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Three GOP senators who voted against the Republican bill, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, did so because they felt it did not cut enough spending.
Fiscal conservatives in both the House and Senate are pushing for steep cuts to reduce the growing $1.3 trillion deficit and $14 trillion debt. Republicans during the 2010 election promised $100 billion in spending cuts this year, a number that can be achieved only when comparing the cuts to President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request rather than current spending levels.
Paul said the GOP cuts were “dwarfed by one year’s spending,” by the federal government. The Democratic cuts were so small, Paul said, they would pay for less than one day’s worth of federal spending.
“I don’t think either side recognizes the enormity of the problem,” Paul said.
Ten Democratic senators broke ranks and voted against their party’s budget proposal. Moderate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska opposed the bill because it did not cut deep enough. Liberal Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Bernie Sanders of Vermont voted against it because they thought it cut too deeply.
No lawmaker crossed party lines to vote for the Democratic or Republican plan, but Democrats were criticized by their rank-and-file for producing a bill without deeper cuts.
The Democratic proposal, McCaskill said, increases spending beyond Obama’s request for 15 different programs.
“We are going in the wrong direction here,” McCaskill said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including McCaskill and Paul, called for cuts that go beyond the discretionary spending now being targeted by both proposals to include reductions in the Pentagon’s budget.
“We cannot do this without pain being felt at the Pentagon,” McCaskill said.
A short-term spending measure is funding the government until March 18. Following Wednesday’s votes, Senate Democrats headed to the White House to discuss a budget deal with Obama, who they have been calling on to get more involved in helping to resolve the stalemate.
