WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday advanced a bipartisan budget deal that would ease $63 billion in spending cuts, overcoming Republican objections and setting the stage for a final vote by today.
The Senate voted 67-33, with 12 Republicans joining all the chamber’s Democrats, to clear the way for the $1.01 trillion spending plan President Barack Obama has said he will sign into law.
Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas joined most Senate Republicans in the filibuster attempt to delay action on the budget measure, while the state’s Democratic senator, Mark Pryor, voted to advance it.
The measure, crafted by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., doesn’t include tax increases that Republicans oppose or entitlement-program changes that Democrats resist. It also doesn’t raise the U.S. borrowing limit, setting up another potential fiscal clash after February.
“Instead of trying to solve everything at once, we decided the most important thing we could do for the families we represent was to end the uncertainty,” Murray, the Senate Budget Committee chairman, said on the floor before the vote.
“We weren’t going to try to tackle the larger challenges. We looked for ways we could compromise.”
The budget deal sets U.S. discretionary spending for this fiscal year higher than the $967 billion required in a 2011 budget plan, drawing opposition from most Republicans. The plan raises fees, including for airline passengers, and is projected to reduce the budget deficit by $23 billion over 10 years.
The House passed the budget measure 332-94 Thursday. Final approval in the Senate requires a simple majority of 51 votes.
PRYOR, BOOZMAN AT ODDS
Pryor said he will vote in favor of the measure, saying in a statement that it is an example of both parties working together.
“This budget agreement isn’t perfect, but it’s a positive step forward. It gives businesses the certainty they need to invest, expand, and create jobs while preventing the my-way-or-the-highway politics of an irresponsible few from shutting down our government and hurting our economy,” Pryor said.
Boozman said he will vote against the budget. He said through a spokesman that the bill falls short of its intended goal, because it reduces the across-the-board mandatory spending cuts known as sequestration and lowers military retiree pensions.
The bill saves $6 billion by trimming cost-of-living increases by 1 percentage point for working-age military retirees, even though such retirees would receive a one-time increase in benefits at age 62.
“There are better ways to find savings than reducing the retirement compensation of individual military retirees by as much as $72,000. It’s simply not appropriate to ask our military retirees for more sacrifice while we continue to ignore our real spending problem,” Boozman said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., acknowledged that change has to come - military pay and benefits soak up 56 percent of the Defense Department’s budget. However, he, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., vowed to reverse the cut.
“The truth of the matter is, we’re probably going to lose this fight, but we’re going to win this war,” he said Tuesday.
A proposal aimed at removing the retirement provision failed on a near party-line vote of 46-54.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was voting for the legislation because it would cancel a $20 billion cut that would hit the Pentagon in January and because the retirement provision could be changed before it took effect.
The measure’s main accomplishment is easing $63 billion in automatic spending cuts over two years and putting in place a formal budget.
Many Republicans are balking because the accord pushes savings into future years and includes user fees that small-government groups are labeling a tax increase.
“Nearly all of the meager spending cuts come way down the road, in 2022 and 2023,” Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said in a statement Tuesday.
“This budget deal emphasizes that Congress has a spending problem.”
The budget plan doesn’t extend unemployment insurance for the chronically jobless, a fight Democrats will pick up when Congress returns next month after the Christmas break. It also doesn’t continue more than 50 tax breaks that will lapse Dec. 31, including the research-and-development tax credit used by companies such as Intel Corp.
‘BREAKS THE LOGJAM’
The agreement could prevent another government shutdown, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers. It’s a “huge event that breaks the logjam on getting away from these herky-jerky shutdowns that we’ve been going through now for all these months and years,” Rogers, R-Ky., said Sunday on C-Span’s Newsmakers program.
After adopting the budget, lawmakers must take another step to avoid a shutdown. Congress will have less than two weeks to pass legislation assigning spending levels to specific agencies. Current funds for government operations expire Jan. 15.
Democrats were unified in their support of the budget deal, including those running in tight contests in 2014, viewing it as a step in the right direction on ending fiscal divisiveness in Washington.
“This is a very important step forward showing that we can compromise,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.
But with 2014 primary opponents waiting in the wings, some Republican lawmakers found it difficult to support even such a limited budget deal.
“Anyone up in 2014 is as nervous as a Christmas goose, and they’ll probably vote against it,” said Ross Baker, a congressional expert at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “Given the risks involved, none of them wants to gratuitously antagonize the conservative Republican base.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee is the lone Republican facing a significant primary challenge to his re-election next year who backed advancing the plan. Alexander and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine are the only Senate Republicans running for re-election in 2014 who voted in favor of advancing the measure.
Collins said she planned to vote for final passage of the plan. Alexander said after Tuesday’s vote that he will vote no but wanted the measure to advance.
“Surely we can at least allow a vote on a Paul Ryan proposal that is supported 2-1 by House Republicans,” Alexander said. “How can we govern if we can’t do that?”
Collins and Alexander both serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which would have more funding to work with in the plan. Three other Republicans on the committee - Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Hoeven of North Dakota and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska - voted to advance the bill.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s primary opponent in Kentucky, Matt Bevin, has been sending out daily news releases needling McConnell, who has been quiet about the deal since it was announced last week. McConnell voted against advancing the measure.
Monday’s email was titled “Where’s Mitch?”
McConnell, a primary architect of the 2011 Budget Control Act, has long opposed spending in excess of that law’s limits.
“I remain convinced that the Budget Control Act has done what it was supposed to do,” McConnell said last week.
“We’ve reduced government spending for two years in a row for the first time since right after the Korean War. Many of us came to Congress to do just that.”
Meanwhile, McConnell spoke out Tuesday on the coming debt-ceiling vote, saying he “can’t imagine” his party would back an increase in the nation’s borrowing authority without demanding some conditions.
“I doubt if the House or, for that matter, the Senate is willing to give the president a clean debt-ceiling increase,” McConnell said.
“Every time the president asks us to raise the debt ceiling is a good time to try to achieve something important for the country.” In an Oct. 16 agreement, Congress suspended the debt limit through Feb. 7, and Democrats and Obama are seeking to increase U.S. borrowing authority with no conditions attached. The government can use so-called extraordinary measures to avoid missing payments, which Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said will let the government pay bills for about a month after the debt-limit suspension ends.
Ryan said Sunday on Fox News Sunday that Republicans would decide in January what to seek in exchange for a debt- limit increase.
McConnell, also a chief architect of a 2011 law raising the debt ceiling and the October deal to suspend the limit, said he was eager to see what conditions the Republican-controlled House would seek.
“We’ll have to see what the House insists on adding to it as a condition for passing it,” he said.
House Republicans, backed by Senate counterparts including McConnell, this year insisted on changes to Obama’s signature 2010 health-care law in return for raising the limit. Democrats refused and Republicans eventually dropped their demand.
Republicans have been criticizing the health-care law with renewed vigor since the botched October rollout of online health-care exchanges.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday that he didn’t think Republicans would try to force another fight by attaching conditions to an increase in borrowing authority.
“I can’t imagine the Republicans want another fight,” Reid said. “We’ve passed two debt ceilings in the very recent past, and we should do another one.”
Information for this article was contributed by Heidi Przybyla, Kathleen Hunter, Richard Rubin, Derek Wallbank and James Rowley of Bloomberg News; by Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times; by David Espo, Donna Cassata and Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; and by Sarah D. Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/18/2013