There’s nothing like a vote on federal spending cuts to make one of the most liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill sound like a Tea Partier.
“We’re going to read this document,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said Monday, referring to the debt ceiling agreement reached Sunday night. “We’re going to understand it before we vote for it.”
Lee, who helped rush the 2,000-page Affordable Care Act through the House before nearly anyone had a chance to read it, promised to pore over the 74-page Budget Control Act in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to stop trillions of dollars in federal spending cuts.
Last year, after the passage of Obamacare, Republicans running for the House included in their “Pledge to America” a promise to allow the public sufficient time to read bills before lawmakers voted on them. “We will give all representatives and citizens at least three days to read the bill before a vote,” the pledge said.
Then came the debt bill, which was finished Sunday evening and released to the public Monday morning. In their race to finish work Monday night, well before the Treasury Department’s midnight Tuesday default deadline, Republicans ended up violating their own read-the-bill pledge.
“We wish there was time to wait three days,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, “but as a result of Washington Democrats’ refusal to offer their own plan, our backs are against the wall — and the three-day rule has a clear exception for such emergencies.”
Meanwhile, the deal’s spending cuts left some Democrats grasping for words to describe just how horrible they thought the measure really was. “This is a Satan sandwich, there’s no question about it,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., on Monday. “With Satan fries on the side,” added Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Lee, trying to make sense of it all, said simply, “We’re eating some sandwiches we don’t like.”
As they spoke, leftist protesters tried to bring a touch of Madison, Wis., to the Capitol, getting ejected from the House chamber after chanting, “Boehner, Boehner, get a clue, it’s about revenue.” As that was going on, Vice President Biden was meeting with angry liberals behind closed doors in an effort to sell the deal. The Tea Party Republicans had “acted like terrorists,” Biden told lawmakers. (Another Democrat, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, referred to Tea Partiers as “arsonists.”) What was scheduled to be a one-hour meeting stretched beyond two, but not many people came out happy.
Meeting with his own members, Boehner tried hard to overcome concerns that the supercommission created in the bill would give a big edge to Democrats who want to slash the defense budget. “I told them this is the best defense number we’re going to get,” Boehner said, which many members found both truthful and depressing.
Making a deal after a long struggle left Republican leaders in a strange mood: relieved, happy to have prevailed, but eager to move on as quickly as possible. “Boehner created the framework of dollar-for-dollar cuts and increases in the debt ceiling,” said one GOP strategist involved in the fight. “That has been a huge change in the debate. At a tactical level, everything may not have been achieved, but at a strategic level this is a huge change in direction.”
Republicans know they’re on the right side of the spending issue. But they’re also acutely aware that federal spending, while critically important, is not the public’s No. 1 concern.
“People still want to focus on jobs and the economy,” says the GOP strategist. “So the challenge for Republicans is to make sure that connection is made. How do you make sure that you’re constantly putting this debate in the context of the larger issue?”
That’s the hard truth Republican leaders remember each time the spending fight threatens to overwhelm everything else in Washington. The deal they hammered out in talks with President Obama and the Democratic leadership — $2.5 trillion in total cuts and $2.4 trillion in debt limit extension — is important, but not the most important issue to most Americans. “The number that’s really going to matter is the one that comes out at the end of this week,” says the Republican strategist, referring to the July unemployment figures that will be released on Friday.
As the debt fight was at its height, Washington Post pollsters asked people for a one-word description of the battle. Three-quarters of those surveyed, the paper reported, answered with negative words; the top answers were “ridiculous,” “disgusting” and “stupid.”
Republican leaders firmly believe this fight was worth it. But they know they have to move on to still more important battles.
Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at [email protected].
