GOP Wants Debt Talks to Produce Quick Spending Cuts
By Joseph J. Schatz, CQ Staff
Republican leaders face pressure to secure fast-acting spending cuts in debt negotiations with the White House, one of many demands from rank-and-file members and outside groups that could complicate prospects for a long-term deal.
Feeling burned by a discretionary spending deal earlier this year — which they say trimmed too little from the government’s bankroll — some conservatives want more assurances that their concerns are being met in the negotiations.
Several Senate Republicans warned Wednesday that ensuring the cuts occur sooner rather than later was vital to securing support for a debt reduction deal. “A great deal depends on the timeline for all of this,” said Patrick J. Toomey , R-Pa., one of the chamber’s most conservative members.
Meanwhile, the conservative Club for Growth and its allies in Congress are pressuring Senate GOP leaders to demand major budget process changes, in addition to spending cuts, from President Obama.
Congressional negotiators will meet for the sixth time with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday to work on a package of deficit reduction measures to accompany an increase in the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.
Leaders in both parties, including House Speaker John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, have called for a swift resolution of those talks, in an effort to avoid any financial distress around a debt limit showdown.
But Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner says he can avoid a default until Aug. 2, and there is no indication that leaders can negotiate a deal much before that date. Republicans are ruling out tax increases, and Democrats refuse to consider major changes to entitlement programs.
Kyl Offers Parameters
Earlier this week, Minority Whip Jon Kyl , R-Ariz., one of six lawmakers in the Biden negotiating group, said Senate Republicans are backing the House GOP leadership’s demand that the size of the increase in the debt limit be matched with equally large spending cuts.
Following that formula, Kyl said, it would take at least $2.4 trillion in spending cuts to secure GOP support for a debt ceiling increase that would satisfy the government’s borrowing needs through 2012. If Democrats won’t accept that premise, he said, Republicans would be willing to take multiple votes on smaller debt limit increases.
The potential cuts under consideration, he said, could be implemented over the course “of a decade or more.”
But allowing the cuts to play out over a period longer than 10 years, which is a typical budgeting window for Congress, could cause problems with some more-conservative Republicans.
Toomey, a former president of the Club for Growth, said Wednesday that while he supports the dollar-for-dollar approach, if such a package of cuts were to take place over a decade, “that’s problematic.” Making the cuts happen more immediately will be important, Toomey said.
Spreading budget cuts over 10 years or more could soften the political impact, making it less difficult to come up with a bipartisan deal.
Yet some House Republicans were unhappy with the final discretionary spending deal struck earlier this year, in part because its budget cuts take effect more slowly than they had expected. The fiscal 2011 catchall bill (PL 112-10), which averted a government shutdown in April, cuts $39.9 billion from current discretionary budget authority.
But the law actually will produce an increase of $3.2 billion in fiscal 2011 outlays, the Congressional Budget Office projects, because some defense funding was shifted from slower-spending to faster-spending activities. Moreover, while House GOP leaders predicted it would save $250 billion over the next decade, the CBO predicted savings of about $122 billion over that period.
Some lawmakers also worry that cuts that are phased in could be reversed by future Congresses.
“There is an absolute need, for lack of a better word, to front-fill the cuts,” Kirk said.
Yet forcing major cuts quickly would be difficult, at best, without considerable budgetary pain, including program reductions likely to be resisted by both parties.
Senate Republican leaders are cognizant that they will have to do some educating about the process of long-term spending cuts, according to a GOP aide.
“If a good part of [the spending cut] falls early, that is a move in the right direction,” he said.
Yet Isakson noted that deficit reduction is a long-term process.
“We’re not going to knock it out in one day or one week or one year,” he added, noting that the changes to Social Security enacted in 1983 (PL 98-21), which ensured the long-term solvency of the system at the time, took decades to phase in.
Outside groups are also sending signals to the Republican leadership. Major business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, have called on Congress to raise the debt limit and also take steps to reduce the debt, but they have avoided endorsing any specific proposals.
Balanced-Budget Effort
The Club for Growth, however, is being more explicit. In a written statement Wednesday, a day after Kyl’s comments, the group’s president, Chris Chocola, said that any agreement to raise the debt limit should also include caps on spending and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.
“$2.5 trillion in cuts without budget reform is simply an inadequate trade for raising the debt ceiling,” said Chocola, a former House member from Indiana. “Spending cuts alone won’t last — they never do — but permanent budget reforms will.”
Kyl was one of eight GOP senators who signed a letter to Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin on Wednesday urging him to hold hearings on a proposal to adopt a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Durbin chairs the Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee.
Kyl spokesman Ryan Patmintra said that the minority whip spoke with Chocola Wednesday after the club’s statement. Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller said later that Kyl and the group agree on the need for spending cuts and changes in the budget process.
Members of the House’s conservative Republican Study Committee also are pushing for a balanced-budget amendment, though some top Republicans consider it impractical and unlikely to get the support needed in Congress and state legislatures.
A balanced-budget amendment (S J Res 10 ) sponsored byOrrin G. Hatch , R-Utah, would bar federal spending from exceeding 18 percent of gross domestic product. All 47 Republican senators have cosponsored the measure.
Brian Friel and Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this story.
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