Why the Simpson-Bowles budget defeat isn't the end of the line
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Why the Simpson-Bowles budget defeat isn't the end of
the line
Simpson-Bowles is still the top bipartisan budget deal
out there - and Congress may need it when it faces a showdown in
December over the expiring Bush tax cuts and mandated spending
cuts.
By: David Grant, Christian Science Monitor, March
29, 2012
A budget plan based on the 2010 Simpson-Bowles proposal for
cutting the nation's debt and deficit was put to its first-ever
vote in Congress Wednesday night after 14 months of languishing as
something between a policy paper and a bipartisan pipe dream.
It went down in flames.
The proposal, built from the work of a bipartisan commission
established by President Obama to determine the best approach to
America's long-term financial challenges, was defeated 38 to 382.
The plan attempts to cut the US deficit by $4 trillion over the
next decade through a mix of spending cuts and higher taxes.
Still, the lopsided vote count may obscure the proposal's
potential to impact the debt debate.
"In order to achieve a big and balanced deficit-reduction
package, we must build a broad consensus," said House Democratic
whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, in a statement. "The budget ... came
to the floor before that broad consensus could be achieved, which
is why I voted against it."
"I continue to believe that the Bowles-Simpson model should be a
basis for ongoing discussions in the effort to create the needed
consensus," he added.
How could a plan that was so thoroughly creamed stay relevant?
With a likely spending showdown looming in December, the plan's
bipartisan bona fides make it worth pursuing, said Reps. Steven
LaTourette (R) of Ohio and Jim Cooper (D) of Tennessee, the bill's
sponsors, on the House floor and in interviews before the vote
Wednesday.
Of the six other budget proposals before the House, ranging from
plans by the arch-conservative Republican Study Committee to the
Congressional Black Caucus, "there's only one that's bipartisan,"
said Representative Cooper.
That fact is going to be important come December, when Congress
will have to deal with a slew of critical financial issues,
including the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the start of the
spending-slashing sequester, the expiration of the payroll tax
holiday, and another needed increase in the nation's debt
ceiling.
Given that the GOP budget offered by House Budget Chairman Paul
Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, slated to pass on Thursday, is a political
nonstarter in the Democratic-controlled Senate - and that House
Republicans will beat back all Democratic proposals - the
Bowles-Simpson plan will give the nation a bipartisan blueprint for
how to proceed when the chips are down, say LaTourette and
Cooper.
"It's where we're going to be in December, so we might as well
begin the conversation now," LaTourette said.
For now, however, those projections don't lessen the sting of
what was a resounding drubbing.
LaTourette had predicted that the bill could garner as many as
100 votes. That would match the number of lawmakers who signed a
letter last summer urging the budget "super committee," a lawmaker
panel created to find $1.2 trillion in savings as part of an accord
that allowed Mr. Obama to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year,
to "go big" and find more than the minimum level of savings.
But on Wednesday, only 16 House Republicans and 22 Democrats
backed the measure.
Several factors worked against a bigger, bipartisan vote. First,
LaTourette and Cooper unveiled their proposal on Tuesday, before
seeing the vote on their bill moved up, along with five other
budget proposals, from Thursday morning to Wednesday night. This
left them hustling to rally support for the plan.
Second, key interest groups on both sides gave the measure a
thumbs down in the hours before the vote. Among them were the
AFL-CIO, the largest American union, on the left and Americans for
Tax Reform, the leading antitax group, on the right.
Finally, wavering lawmakers may have been given further pause
after the "nays" rocketed north of 200 as the "yea" votes struggled
to top 20 soon after the voting began after 9 p.m. on
Wednesday.
"We have been viciously attacked from the left and the right,
and when you know you have a good deal is when the left and the
right are pounding the snot out of you," LaTourette said on the
House floor.
But he had a challenge for his colleagues as well. Later, he
added: "If not now, when? And if not this, what?"