It was supposed to be the easy one.
A bill to fund military construction and veterans affairs for fiscal 2016 was expected to sail through the House on Wednesday, but at the last minute Republicans postponed a vote when it became clear a Democratic amendment to blow up the legislation actually stood a chance of passing with GOP support.
The legislation was poised to eventually pass, Republican leaders insisted, but the floor struggle over the measure foreshadows what will be a difficult few months as Congress attempts to pass 12 spending bills that stick to federally-mandated spending caps that lawmakers in both parties despise.
A bill to fund the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services as well as legislation to pay for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development are expected to be impossible to pass, due to the mandated spending limit.
“The numbers we are having to appropriate to, I’m not sure we can pass these bills,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said on Wednesday as he headed into the House chamber to vote. “It’s going to be tough.”
The caps were put in place as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, and they require fiscal 2016 spending to come in under $1 trillion.
The deal is known as the sequester. And it was intended to be replaced with a broad agreement between Congress and the White House to reform spending, entitlements and taxes with the aim of shrinking the nation’s staggering debt and deficit.
But that deal never materialized, partly because Democrats and Republicans could not agree on how to reform taxes and Democrats were eager to steer clear of any changes to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.
As a result, Congress each year has stumbled in its attempt to pass individual spending bills, with nearly all Democrats and many Republicans unwilling to endorse legislation that includes significant cuts.
It has led to last-minute deals to pass giant spending bills that encompass all or many parts of the government in legislation known as “omnibus” bills, usually passed with just minutes to spare before the government shuts down for lack of renewed funding.
The same could happen this year if the spending bills stall, Rogers said.
“It would throw us into another omnibus at the end of the year,” Rogers said. “And nobody wants that.”
Republican leaders appear to be ready to try a new strategy. They have been sending out signals that they want to cut a deal with President Obama to end the sequester with a broad spending reform deal that would mirror the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013. The deal, crafted by then-House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and then-Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., removed the budget caps for two years, offsetting the cost with an increase in federal fees for certain services and slight changes to federal pensions.
Republicans are hoping for a repeat of the Ryan-Murray deal to rescue them from almost certain gridlock on the spending legislation. Republicans also have called for a deal that would permanently end the sequester by tackling entitlement spending and taxes.
“If the president is serious about this, we’d welcome his involvement in fixing our long-term spending problem,” House Speaker John Boehner said.
The two sides will eventually have to negotiate.
Obama last week threatened to veto spending bills that adhere to the sequester caps.
He has proposed increasing taxes to pay for eliminating them, but last week his spokesman opened the door to compromise in the spirit of the Ryan-Murray deal.
Nobody in Congress or the White House has made any recommendations as to who in Congress should lead the effort this time around.
“Ultimately, members of Congress, and probably leaders in Congress from both parties, are going to have to decide who will play those important roles,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. “But if they do begin to move down this road in a constructive fashion, they can anticipate the full engagement and support of the administration in pursuit of that bipartisan compromise.”
