House Speaker John Boehner threw the door open for a bipartisan plan that would lift spending caps put in place under the 2011 Budget Control Act known as the sequester.
“If there is a way to reduce mandatory spending in a way that would provide relief to the sequester … have at it,” Boehner said Thursday.
Boehner’s remarks are the strongest signal yet that the Republican-led Congress may ditch the sequester, which forces reductions in spending that both parties have found to be unpalatable, even though it reduced federal spending.
Lawmakers have been eyeing a deal similar to a 2013 accord struck by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., then-chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., then-chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee.
Their deal ended the sequester for two years, making up part of the difference by tinkering with federal pensions and raising some government fees.
“The Ryan-Murray effort we had several years ago worked to provide relief,” Boehner said. “That could happen again.”
Among the most eager to undo the sequester are the House and Senate appropriators, whose job is to allocate money to each division of the federal budget.
Top appropriators have told the Washington Examiner they will be unable to author spending bills under the sequester caps because lawmakers simply won’t agree to the lower spending levels.
That could lead to another spending fight and government shutdown battle Republicans are eager to avoid.
President Obama has signaled he also is eager to undo the sequester, and does so in his fiscal 2016 spending blueprint. But he makes up for the additional spending with tax increases, a non-starter with Republicans.
Budget negotiators could include a plan to lift the sequester in a final House-Senate spending blueprint now underway, Boehner said.
“Nobody is interested in shutting down the government,” Boehner said. “We are interested in real fiscal responsibility. If such an effort is called for in the budget agreement, if such an effort can get off the ground — hope springs eternal.”
