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"Our Members Have Been Ready for This Fight All Year."

By Mark I Posted in Budget | Congress | Earmarks | Jeb Hensarling | Roy Blunt | The Appropriations Process — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Republicans in the House held a conference call today on the appropriations process. The call was hosted by Minority Whip Rep. Roy Blunt and joined by Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling. The purpose was to lay out the Republican leadership’s strategy for dealing with the omnibus appropriations bill working its way through Congress.

Last night, the cantankerous Democratic Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey (D-WI), threatened to pull all earmarks out of the bill unless Republicans agreed to negotiate on spending levels. The White House called Obey’s bluff and said that it’s position on funding for domestic programs had not changed. Blunt and Hensarling wanted to make it clear to the assembled journalists and bloggers that Republicans has “gotten the message” on spending and intended, on the House side at least, to hold Democrats to their campaign pledges of fiscal responsibility.

Read on…

Rep. Blunt was asked how well he thought the Republican caucus would hold together in light of comments made by more moderate members in the Washington Post. Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) said, “There are a lot of people who were very disappointed last year when nobody got any earmarks. If they do it again for the second year in a row, it will be a very bitter pill to swallow.” Rep. Jim Walsh (R-NY) took to the House floor and said, “If the proposal is to split the difference, to reduce the amount of spending above the president's request by $11 billion, I would advise the president to take yes for an answer.” The Congressmen’s comments seem to show daylight between the leadership and its desire to re-brand the party as fiscally responsible, and rank-and-file members.

Blunt’s assessment was optimistic.

I think we're going to do a good job of holding together our members. Our members have been ready for this fight all year. We're at a point where we really do begin the process of establishing our fiscally responsible, our taxpayer-responsible credentials.

We'll have some members who will be in the camp of those members you mentioned in that Washington Post article this morning. They will just go ahead and make a deal. But as Jeb's pointed out, $11 billion or $23 billion -- the Democrats want to suggest this isn't any money at all, and the truth is that it's a lot of money.

$23 billion is more than the entire state budgets of more than three-dozen of our states -- and that's everything they spend on everything -- on highways, on education, on the other programs that states fund. If you're a taxpayer in one of these states, and you think about all of the money your state government spends it for everything they spend it for, it's less in 36 of the states than the $23 billion that the Democrats say doesn't matter.

A billion dollars is a lot of money anywhere in the world, and it's time it became a lot of money in Washington, D.C., and we're going to insist on that.

This is welcome rhetoric from the leadership and the kind that would have served them well when Republicans were in the majority.

In addition to the spending levels, Blunt and Hensarling focused attention on authorizing policies in the appropriations bill. Blunt said that these policies, which direct spending to or from certain programs, were just as important as the overall budget number. He pointed to policies in the Democrats’ bill that “would make it more difficult to build a border fence,” put the Mexico City policy—which prohibits funding for overseas family planning groups that counsel abortion—in jeopardy, and hurt the nation’s ability to pursue energy independence. Hensarling added that the Republicans goal was to reach the president’s budget requests “with a good bill.” He said that money was not the only priority on the Republicans’ agenda.

Blunt summed up by characterizing the Democrats as “reach[ing] beyond the American people,” with their spending requests and authorizing policies in the appropriations bill. He predicted that next week would be one of good results on the bill and even predicted that funding for the troops would be included in the deal; either as a separate package or in the final appropriation. “Unless Democrats want to spend the entire month of January explaining,” why the troops were not funded, he said.