Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

The Policy Racket

Late compromise could avert federal government shutdown

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Harry Reid

Early this morning it seemed like a shutdown was inevitable. But a last-minute shift by the biggest Tea Party supporters in Congress now makes it seem like less of an obstacle to reach a deal.

As reported in The Hill, Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota and Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, two of the biggest Tea Party ralliers in Congress, said this morning they thought negotiators should drop the issue of policy riders and move on to avoid a shutdown of the government.

That should free up House Speaker John Boehner to agree to a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at some point today, before midnight, when the money runs out.

Reid has been saying for the past several days that the gridlock comes down to a disagreement about policy riders – and it appears the final hang-up is over Republicans’ attempts to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

Republicans have countered by saying no, it’s about the Democrats’ inability to cut enough.

But it does seem like the differences between the parties are coming down to where, not how much, to cut at this point.

The final figure is $78 billion off the president's fiscal 2011 request, or $38 billion in cuts from what spending levels are now.

“Counter 2 GOP spin, we agreed on a number @ WH. Only thing standing btw us & an agreement 2 keep govt open is GOP oppo to women's health,” Reid’s chief spokesman Jon Summer tweeted Friday morning, shortly before the figure was announced.

The Democrats have been interpreting this entire negotiations process as a fault of Boehner’s inability to stand up to the Tea Party wing of his own party.

Boehner initially asked for spending reductions at a level in line with what it appears negotiators will ultimately agree on. But then he caved when Tea Party conservatives in his caucus demanded that he slice almost twice as much; that being enough to let them meet their campaign promise that they’d slash $100 billion from what the White House wanted as the federal budget.

But now that some of the most prominent Tea Party members are urging leaders to drop the riders issue and move on, it appears there may be a little breathing room for a deal. While Bachmann and Toomey aren’t official representatives of the Tea Party – there are no official representatives of the faction and the Tea Party has no official ranks -- they have emerged as two of the most outspoken, leader-like members for the group that’s been pressuring Boehner not to cleave from their bargaining position.

Reid’s been insisting the government can’t be held hostage to a symbolic debate on abortion that’s been raging for 40 years.

If Boehner doesn’t take the space offered by their changed position, it’ll reveal something about who’s pulling the strings behind the House’s top Republican.

But Boehner’s been stressing that to him the dispute is really just about spending. In that case, the hang-up over abortion makes even less sense: abortion is already regulated by federal laws: namely, the Hyde Amendment, which has made it illegal to federally fund abortions since 1977. While Planned Parenthood does offer abortions, the government dollars that back it up go toward other women’s health services – from providing birth control, to preventive gynecological check-ups, to cancer screenings.

If he doesn’t agree to ink a deal, it indicates that Boehner’s problem isn’t so much the Tea Party as it is an older guard of social conservatives – who haven’t been a major political reckoning force for the last few election cycles – prioritizing a very politically charged, but ultimately very invisible piece of the budget, over preventing a shutdown of the government.

Which isn’t cheap, by the way.

Boehner has said, and his chief spokesman repeated this morning, that “nothing is decided until everything is decided.” That may prove to be the case, as staff members for both Reid and Boehner continued to hash out details Friday morning. In negotiations like this, it almost seems like if you haven’t used the last minute, you’ve lost some political ground.

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