Harry Reid, Senate Democrats say they back Obama budget priorities

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011 | 11:50 a.m.

There are two ways to move an agenda if you’re a president with a split Congress: join forces with the Democrats and try to pressure the Republicans, or join forces with the Republicans and try to lean on the Democrats. Or hope the two sides bury the hatchet in a new spirit of bipartisanship -- but that’s always a bit of a stretch with a presidential election on the horizon.

At the end of last year, as Congress wrestled out a compromise on tax reform during the lame duck session, it seemed like the president might be favoring a deal-making alliance with the GOP. Pledges to freeze discretionary spending for five years, veto any bill with earmarks and engage in entitlement reform during his State of the Union speech also seemed like a bid to win favor with Republicans, especially those running the House.

But Republicans have rebuffed Obama’s advances, leaving the door open for Democratic leaders in the Senate to secure their natural party alliance with the White House. For the last few weeks, they’ve been doing it in word; on Wednesday, they made a move to do it in deed.

Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, announced they would fully support the president’s budgetary priorities, including his pledge to freeze discretionary spending, simplify and reform the tax code, in a legislative agenda aimed at put meat behind Obama’s promises to “out-innovate,” “out-build” and “out-educate.”

“Senate Democrats are working to create jobs and make America more competitive," Reid said. “As we reduce government spending and cut the deficit, we will continue to create jobs and strengthen our future by becoming the world leader in clean energy, reviving American manufacturing and preparing our workforce for the jobs of tomorrow.”

The agenda includes items ranging from plans to fix No Child Left Behind, to making direct and tax-based investments in new energy technology, to funding transportation, to going after China for manipulating its currency. Some points of the agenda -- such as a reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration -- are already in the works; others, Reid promised, would be worked into bill form soon.

But as senators work up legislative vehicles to carry the President’s fiscal 2012 agenda forward, they’re still under the gun to settle the books for fiscal 2011.

The federal government’s funding expires on March 4, but House Republicans don’t appear to be willing to cut another check that strips any less than $100 billion out from what the president had initially requested for the present fiscal year -- a request that never got put into a bill. The government has patched itself along for the last six months through short-term continuing resolutions; the House’s bill, also, is a continuing resolution, but one that seeks to extend less than last year’s budget.

Obama threatened Wednesday to veto that bill in its present form, though it’s still nowhere near reaching his desk. House members have filed hundreds of amendments to the measure that they have to slog through before transmitting it to the Senate, where lawmakers -- Democrats and Republicans -- have already said they want to take a swipe at its provisions, too.

While the president has remained tempered in his speech, his veto threat is an indication that his patience with the Republicans’ agenda is starting to wear thin.

“My goal is to work with the Republicans,” he told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. “I believe we can find this common ground, but we’re going to have to work.”

Obama has made other gestures to Democrats in the context of the ongoing budget process that could almost be construed as apologetic, such as his desire to sunset the across-the-board tax extensions for filers making more than $250,000 a year once the tax compromise law expires, despite having had to cut a deal that exposed the discord among Democratic ranks.

That isn’t desirable at any time, but especially not when 23 Democratic Senate seats are going to be up for elections in the present cycle -- a fact that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reminds them of in ominous tones on at least a weekly basis.

So Senate Democrats are now taking steps to avoid a similar public display of their weak flank in the future. At Reid’s request, the quartet of leaders is having a meeting with the President and Vice President Joe Biden this afternoon -- seemingly, to coordinate their message.

They may need it, as Republicans don’t appear willing to back down from their stand anytime soon. On Wednesday, McConnell pledged that Republican Senators would echo the House’s spirit of spending cuts by drafting their own plan of options to cut $100 billion from the 2011 budget.

But when it comes to the budget, the Senate Republicans aren’t the most united of caucuses right now either. While Tea Partiers like Kentucky’s Rand Paul have derided the $100 billion figure as barely significant, moderates, like Massachusetts’ Scott Brown and Maine’s Susan Collins, have said there are cuts in the House proposal they’d like to protect against -- though no Republican has gone on record to advocate they seek to cut less than the proposed $100 billion overall.