State has more people on the two congressional budget committees than any other, even California

 

By Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel

 

Washington, D.C. - Depending on how you see it, the budget debate in Congress is a moment of great clarity or futility, an edifying clash of competing worldviews or a fruitless partisan standoff.

 

In either case, the state of Wisconsin is richly represented in the exercise.

 

It not only boasts the chairman of the House budget committee, Republican Paul Ryan. But seven of the state's 10 members of Congress sit on the House or Senate budget panels that in March produced two different spending blueprints that are widely viewed as irreconcilable.

 

Wisconsin has more people on the two congressional budget committees than any other state, even California, which has roughly five times as many federal lawmakers.

 

They include Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin in the Senate, and five of the state's eight House members: Republicans Ryan, Reid Ribble and Sean Duffy and Democrats Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan.

 

Ribble said there may be no direct benefit the state of Wisconsin gets out of its oddly heavy representation on the budget-writing committees.

 

But he says serving on the budget panels gives members a "big picture" understanding of the expanse of the federal government that they don't get from other committee assignments.

 

He and his colleagues contend the budget debate serves a purpose even when it fails to produce a plan anyone can agree on.

 

"Now there really are two different paths for the American people to look at," said Ribble, referring to the Democratic plan produced by the Senate and the Republican plan produced by the House.

 

"The president will come out with his budget April 10. That will be a third path," Ribble said. "It becomes part of a broader national debate about what the government should look like."

 

Baldwin served on the House budget panel for six years before moving to the Senate.

 

"You get a bird's-eye view of the entire federal government," she says of the budget committees.

 

Wisconsin is the only state with two senators from different parties on the budget committee, and Baldwin and Johnson represent vastly different governing philosophies.

 

"When you're debating a budget, you're really debating a document that represents your values and priorities looking forward," says Baldwin.

 

In recent budget committee debates, Baldwin argued for what she called a "balanced" approach, combining spending curbs with some tax increases. She derided the House budget drafted "by my friend and fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan," saying it was so heavy on deficit reduction that it sacrificed economic growth, and placed the burden for balancing the budget overwhelmingly on the middle class.

 

"A deficit plan alone is not an economic plan," said Baldwin, who inserted an amendment into the Democratic budget promoting the creation of "manufacturing hubs" around the country.

 

Johnson has used his perch on the budget committee to hammer home the overarching theme of his 2010 campaign and his Senate tenure: that government is too big and powerful.

 

"Let's stop pulling the wool over people's eyes," he implored at a recent committee meeting, warning of a Greece-like debt crisis if and when interest rates return to historically higher levels.

 

"This is probably an irreconcilable situation," Johnson says in an interview, referring to the two partisan budgets.

 

But he said it's a form of progress that Senate Democrats finally passed a budget after several years without one, even if it's a document he believes spends and taxes too much.

 

"Just the process itself was very, very helpful," says Johnson. "The Senate had just been dysfunctional."

 

Johnson said he came out of the committee's deliberations with stronger relationships with members on the other side of the aisle, pointing to Vermont's Bernie Sanders (perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate) as someone he has had "pretty good conversations with."

 

"There's probably not a senator I'm further apart with ideologically," said Johnson. "But we were interested in each other's ideas. I said, 'Senator Sanders, you just might be surprised how many things we actually agree on.' "

 

Baldwin says the GOP's budget vision was rejected in the 2012 presidential election.

 

Like other Republicans, Johnson disputes the notion that President Barack Obama's victory gave him an economic mandate, saying the election was a "stalemate" because it left the Democrats in control of the White House and Senate and Republicans in control of the House.

 

"I think people are realizing, 'OK, we're still stalemated. The election is over. Gee, maybe it's time to govern.' I've had more genuine substantive conversations with Democrats in the Senate in the last few months than I've had in a couple of years," says Johnson.

 

Ryan's House budget calls for the repeal of the new health care law, among other things. In a recent interview, he said no one should have expected the GOP to retreat on its fiscal agenda after losing the presidential election.

 

"So we should just give up everything we believe and go with the others guy's program? What do you think people would say if all of a sudden we just said we're going to keep Obamacare and fully fund it?" said Ryan. "A budget is your vision what you think the government should look like."

 

Freshman Democrat Pocan asked to serve on the House budget committee, having served on the Joint Finance Committee in the Legislature.

 

"I'm trying to learn as much as possible in as little amount of time as possible," he says, calling the budget panel a "30,000-foot kind of committee."

 

While still new to Congress, Pocan says the contrast between the state and federal budget process is both startling and frustrating.

 

"It's definitely odd coming from where (in Madison) we spent eight hours a day, three days a week for four months creating a budget document that meant something, to this (budget standoff)," says Pocan.

 

"It's potentially great," he says of serving on the budget committee, "if we actually worked on a budget that ever could become law."

 

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