WASHINGTON - Arkansas’ U.S. House delegation was split on a two-year federal budget bill approved Thursday night, after conservative groups said congressmen would be held accountable if they voted yes.
Reps. Steve Womack and Tim Griffin voted yes. Reps. Tom Cotton and Rick Crawford voted no.
The legislation lifts discretionary spending caps to $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015. It also raises some fees and lays out spending cuts for the future. The budget reduces automatic, across-the-board spending cuts put in place in 2011, known as sequestration, that went into effect this year when Congress couldn’t agree on cuts that were more targeted.
Three of the four Arkansas Republicans said they wanted a plan that maintained the sequestration cuts created in the 2011 Budget Control Act.
Not of that view was Womack, who said the bill passed Thursday will have a greater long-term effect on government spending.
He said approving a twoyear budget also “moves us away from governing by crisis.”
“Government, whether you like it or not, has to be able to function,” Womack said.
Griffin said he would have preferred a bill that maintained the cuts, but chose to vote yes to avoid another government shutdown. He said there wasn’t enough support to approve a bill without removing the sequestration cuts. He is not running for re-election.
Legislation to allow the government to spend money expires Jan. 15. The House leaves until early January at the end of this week, and the Senate a week later.
Crawford and Cotton said they couldn’t support a budget that reduced the cuts.
After several of the conservative groups announced their opposition of the deal, House Speaker John Boehner accused them of wanting just to raise money, not enact conservative policy.
At a news conference Thursday, Boehner said the groups undermined their credibility by opposing the bill before reading it.
“Frankly, I think they are misleading their followers. I think they’re pushing our members in places where they don’t want to be, and, frankly, I just think that they’ve lost all credibility,” the Ohio Republican told reporters.
Boehner’s comments were the clearest sign of the Republican establishment’s taking a stance against the more conservative, grass-roots wing of the party, which has been spearheaded of late by the Tea Party faction and has at times dictated the actions of the House.
When a reporter asked if Boehner wants the groups to stand down, the speaker responded, “I don’t care what they do.”
Griffin agreed, saying some groups such as Heritage Action for America and Freedom Works pushed for the government to shut down in October and have lost credibility.
“Most of them are all about building fundraising lists, I get that,” Griffin said. “They’re not in the meetings. They don’t know what we’ve got the votes for, what we don’t have the votes for.”
When word of a deal began to circulate this week, conservative advocates took to social media, urging Republicans to vote against the plan and uphold the sequestration cuts.
Supporters of Arkansas’ branch of Americans for Prosperity took particular aim at Womack and U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., online.
Americans for Prosperity state Director Jason Cline said the group focused on Womack because he is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and on Pryor because he is the only Democrat in the congressional delegation.
An hour before the vote, the Arkansas branch was still sending messages on microblogging site Twitter telling people to “Tweet @rep_stevewomack NOW to vote no on this budget tonight!”
Womack said he wasn’t swayed.
“My vote belongs to me; it doesn’t belong to the outside groups,” Womack said.
Also before the vote, Cline said Americans for Prosperity would grade congressional members on their votes, calling on them to stick with the plan they originally supported.
“Let’s just keep our promises,” Cline said.
The cuts were never supposed to happen, Womack said, so he sees the vote as fixing something that went wrong, not breaking a promise.
Womack is the only Republican running for re-election who has a primary opponent. Thomas Brewer, a math teacher at Northwest Arkansas Classical Academy in Bentonville, plans to challenge Womack for the Republican nomination.
The Club for Growth, an organization with a fiscally conservative agenda, urged a vote of no Thursday and warned lawmakers that the vote would be included in its congressional scorecard ranking members support of “progrowth, free market” policies.
“Apparently, there are some Republicans who don’t have the stomach for even relatively small spending reductions that are devoid of budgetary smoke and mirrors,” Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a news release Tuesday. “If Republicans work with Democrats to pass this deal, it should surprise no one when Republican voters seek alternatives who actually believe in less spending when they go to the ballot box.”
Arkansas’ House members have benefited from the Club for Growth’s fundraising arm in the past. In 2012, its members sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cotton’s campaign.
Cotton’s office said the congressman didn’t feel pressured to vote a certain way by conservative groups.
“Arkansans are tired of the Washington ‘long-term,’ which never seems to arrive,” Cotton said in a statement explaining his opposition.
He said the deal comes “at the expense of hard-won fiscal discipline because of the unreasonable demands of President Obama and Senate Democrats.”
The Club for Growth is led by Jackson Stephens Jr. of Little Rock, the son of Jackson Stephens, the late financier and philanthropist.
Womack said he heard from a lot of constituents who asked him to oppose the measure but he didn’t feel pressured to vote a certain way.
Crawford said: “My voting card does not say Club for Growth, my voting card does not say Americans for Prosperity. It says 1st District of Arkansas.”
Last spring the Club for Growth accused Womack of having too liberal of a voting record. It included Crawford on a list of congressmen that it hopes will draw primary challenges in the 2014 election. No primary opponent has come forward yet in the 1st District.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/13/2013