By Patrick OConnor & Janet Hook
The Wall Street Journal
Republicans Poised to Take Control of the House Put Budget in Cross Hairs.
The Republican majority that takes over the House this week plans an ambitious drive to slash government spending by tens of billions of dollars in the next few months a strategy that ensures that the capital soon will be consumed by intense debate over how and where to reduce the size of government.
The incoming House majority will start by offering two measures this week that carry more symbolism than substance. One will be a motion to repeal the health bill that President Barack Obama signed last year and the second will be a measure to trim the cost of running the House itself. The health-care repeal isnt expected to go anywhere in the Senate where Democrats retain the majority and the package of cuts to the House budget will only save about $25 million from a federal budget that exceeds $3 trillion.
After that however Republicans in the House say they plan to move on to offer a far more sweeping package of recissions or elimination of spending previously approved that will aim to bring domestic spending back to where it was before Mr. Obama became president. The skirmish over that proposal for spending cuts coupled with related fights over government regulation and health care will set the battle lines for the next two years as Washington returns to divided government.
Unlike its predecessors in the Republican Revolution of 1994 or among the Democrats who took charge of the House after the 2006 election the new Republican majority doesnt return to power with a long to-do list of legislative priorities. Instead party members say they were elected with one big mandate: Cut spending. The details of that push will unfold in the weeks leading up to the March 4 deadline for Congress to fund the federal government and play out against a backdrop of mounting federal deficits.
House Republicans have also set their sights on scaling back environmental regulations and tightening border security. But spending cuts are their primary focus with a pledge to cut about 21 from the $477 billion lawmakers have approved for domestic discretionary spending this year.
Getting a grip on this years spending is only the first step in addressing our long term budget challengesbut its a step we must take and we must take it now said incoming
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R. Wis.) in a statement.
Cutting spending in the middle of a fiscal year is a total end-run around the budget process said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen the top Democrat on the budget committee.
Republicans will be treading a fine and politically risky line in trying to carry out a perceived election mandate. While Republican voters voiced their opposition to high deficits and spending polls show that the programs that account for much of that growthMedicare and Social Security which benefit elderly Americansare popular.
In another early move Republicans are requiring the reading of the U.S. Constitution on Thursdaya nod to the tea-party activists who were so important to GOP victories in the fall and the movements complaints that Congress has reached beyond its constitutional powers under the Obama administration.
First up among the proposed spending cuts is one that will be offered later this week to shave 5 from the operating budgets for individual members offices committees and leadership staff. Republicans estimate the package will save $25 million.
The bigger recission billwhich will essentially take back money that is already appropriatedwill take shape over the next month or two. One target is part of the presidents $814 billion stimulus that hasnt been promised to existing programs which Republicans estimate would save $12 billion. The bulk of it includes funds for high-speed rail projects. Also included is money provided for food stamps under a formula that presumed food prices would rise more than they actually did.
Even if the House passes the bill theres no guarantee the Senate would send it to Mr. Obama and the president isnt expected to sign any legislation that would gut his programs. White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee suggested Sunday that Mr. Obama will try to beat the Republicans to the punch with cuts hes likely to spell out in his State of the Union address late this month. Mr. Goolsbee in an appearance on ABCs This Week said: We are going to have to make in the medium run a series of tough choices and the presidents not afraid to do that and I think you will see in his budget that hes willing to.
Republicans arent proposing an across-the-board cut on the government so some departments could see deeper cuts than others. The top targets could be programs whose budgets saw a jump under Democrats like foreign aid and Pell Grants for middle-income college students.
The Republican majority finds itself on a collision course with a number of federal agencies over regulatory policy including the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The House GOP could use the threat of spending cuts to pressure these and other agencies like denying money to the Department of Health and Human Services for implementing the health-care bill or to the Securities and Exchange Commission to carry out new rules for the financial markets.
Rep. Fred Upton (R. Mich.) the incoming chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee said Sunday that his panel would hold early hearings on an EPA rule-making process already under way to set emissions limits on refineries and coal- and gas-fired power plants. He also threatened a congressional repeal of those regulations once theyre announced.
The incoming majority has proposed changes to the rules governing the House that will make it easier for them to cut spending and repeal the health-care bill. Foremost is a change that would let Mr. Ryan the incoming budget committee chairman set spending levels for the rest of the year without approval from other members of his panel or the broader House. Mr. Ryan said if the change passes he will wait until the Congressional Budget Office releases its baseline budget projections later this month before setting the limits that would take non-security spending back to its pre-bailout pre-stimulus spending levels.
Republicans to Try to Set Agenda on a Range of Legislative Fronts
Republicans in the new Congress with control of the House and larger numbers in the Senate promise to use their power to focus most intensely on ways to cut spending in a time of giant budget deficits. But their influence will change the terms of Washingtons debate on a range of other major issues as well:
• Health care: Republicans plan an early House vote on legislation to repeal President Barack Obamas health-care law but they concede that has little chance of passing the Senate. They will follow up with targeted measures to cut off funding to enact the laws less popular provisions such as enforcement of the requirement that most Americans carry health insurance expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor and subsidies to offset the cost of buying insurance for lower-income workers.
• Environment: The new Republican majority in the House will use oversight hearings to try to pressure the EPA to back down from environmental regulations. Targets include EPA efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and other big industrial facilities. Rep. Fred Upton (R. Mich.) the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has said Republicans will not allow the Obama administration to issue the standards siding with businesses that say the necessary technology doesnt exist. Republicans will also take aim at EPA plans to regulate the waste generated by coal-fired power plants.
• Immigration: Republicans are likely to shift their focus to tougher border-security measures and away from fighting the DREAM Act which failed in the Senate. The measure would have provided a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Rep. Steven King (R. Iowa) who is expected to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committees immigration subcommittee supports building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The
question is how far Republicans are willing to go in cracking down on illegal immigrants many of whom are Latinos at a time when the latest Census figures show Hispanics make up 15 of the U.S. population. An approach favored by
Rep. Lamar Smith (R. Texas) the next head of the House Judiciary Committee involves requiring businesses to verify workers immigration status through an electronic system known as E-Verify.
• Judicial Nominations: Expect little change in the partisan grudge match over court picks which Chief Justice John Roberts decried as a recurring problem in his year-end report Friday. Democrats will continue to control the Senate which confirms federal judges. In the last Congress however judicial nominations were low on Democrats priority list disappointing liberal activists who felt the ex-law professor in the White House and his filibuster-resistant Senate majority squandered an opportunity to reshape the federal judiciary.
In contrast Republicans long have made molding the courts a top objective. As they did in the last Congress Republicans likely will make up in energy what they lack in numbers using parliamentary privileges to slow or block Obama nominees.
• Education: School reform has been identified by Mr. Obama as an area of possible compromise. Rep. John Boehner (R. Ohio) the new House speaker has an interest in the issue dating to his co-authorship of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act that is up for renewal. But the parties have long warred over education funding questions and the budget deficit will make these even more pressing. Any government program expansion could run into opposition from the influx of tea-party Republicans who want a reduced federal role in the schools.
