If February seemed like a tumultuous month in Congress, March is also poised to be turbulent as lawmakers grapple with key spending issues that divide Republicans internally and pit the party firmly against Democrats.
Much of the fighting will center on budget negotiations, which get underway formally this week and are meant to outline funding priorities for the coming fiscal year and set limits on spending.
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Few budgets have cleared both houses of Congress in recent years, mostly due to divisions within and between the two parties on how much money the federal government should spend on both domestic and military programs.
The differences remain as stark as ever, but with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress for the first time in eight years, the party is determined to pass a budget with the GOP stamp of approval.
“This is a defining moment for the Republican Party,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said. “Who are we?”
This week, the House and Senate are scheduled to roll out their fiscal 2016 budget plans that will become the spending blueprints for lawmakers as they write appropriations measures in the coming months.
Lawmakers in both chambers are already venting about the two plans because both maintain cuts that will dig into domestic and military spending.
Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have promised to vote against a budget that adheres to the $523 billion defense spending cap.
But that is exactly what budget writers plan to do. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have decided to stick to the spending caps imposed under the Budget Control Act of 2011. The law mandates that the federal government reduce non-mandatory spending by approximately $1 trillion over 10 years.
For next year’s spending bills, that will translate into big cuts.
In a recent memo to Obama, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan warned the sequester will reduce next year’s defense spending by nearly $54 billion and domestic spending by $36.5 billion.
But Republicans may have had little choice.
Writing a budget that exceeded the legal spending caps would have alienated many conservatives, particularly in the House, where dozens were elected after promising to cut the nation’s $468 billion deficit.
With Democratic support for a GOP budget nearly nonexistent, Republicans would stand a better chance of passing a spending blueprint that sticks to conservative spending.
“There would be a group of people who would oppose lifting the cap,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., told the Washington Examiner. “Deficits matter. Still.”
Some GOP appropriators have been pushing for a budget that lifts the spending limits because, they say, it will be impossible to pass actual spending bills because nobody will agree to the necessary program cuts.
“I want to get rid of sequestration,” Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said.
Simpson is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on the the Interior and the Environment.
Last year, he had to abandon his bill because nobody would support the reductions needed to reduce the cost of the bill from $29.5 billion to $23 billion, as mandated under the sequester.
“I eliminated all of the money for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities,” Simpson recalled. “If you really look at it, you won’t pass any appropriations bills. Because of the programs you would have to cut.”
The budget isn’t the only headache the GOP faces in March.
Republicans are at work on a deal to end the perennial problem associated with an automatic reduction in government reimbursements to Medicare doctors.
The “fix” under discussion would permanently end the reduction but at a high cost that adds to the nation’s deficit.
Such a plan is likely to anger conservative lawmakers and outside groups who are opposed to spending that is not offset by other cuts.
“From what we’ve heard, the deal is going to be a non-starter with conservatives,” said a spokesman for Heritage Action for America.
