The bipartisan spirit that led to a two-year budget agreement between the White House and congressional Republicans and Democrats is officially dead, as far as the Obama administration is concerned.
Republicans are determined to “lard the bill up with ideological riders,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday, speaking about the proposed omnibus-spending bill that is supposed to implement the budget agreement struck in October and fund the government beyond Dec. 11.
These riders, which number more than 100, are just earmarks by another name, Earnest charged. He said a policy rider, like an earmark, is just a provision that benefits a special interest.
Congressional Republicans would undermine Wall Street reform to benefit large financial institutions and undermine environmental laws to benefit polluters if the catchall spending bill comes to the floor in its current form, Earnest said.
“None of this is how the budget process is supposed to work,” he said.
If Republicans insist on maintaining provisions, such as one that would block federal funding to Planned Parenthood or another that would halt the administration’s plans to allow 10,000 refugees from Syria and Iran into the U.S. this year, they will not get Democratic support, Earnest said.
He also warned that relying on only Republicans to pass spending measures doesn’t work. “Just ask former Speaker John Boehner,” Earnest said.
Congressional Republicans are “whistling past the political graveyard of a government shutdown” with their spending plan, Earnest said.
