Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Policy Racket

Political deals on table as federal budget negotiations continue

Sun Coverage

WASHINGTON - The not-so-fruitful negotiations over how to scale down the federal budget have thus far centered, rather unsurprisingly, around money.

But lawmakers may end up breaking the rut by trading dollars for political deals.

Policy riders, on topics ranging from pulling funding from Planned Parenthood to stripping emissions regulations authority from the Environmental Protection Agency, have in recent weeks been touted by Democrats as just as objectionable -- if not even more so at times -- than the Republicans’ determination to hit the Tea Party-set goal of rolling back this year’s budget by $100 billion.

But if it gets them to back off that figure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today that Democrats are not only ready to parley on the riders issue, but they’ve already started.

“We're happy to look at the policy riders. There aren't many of them that excite me,” he said. “But we're willing to look at them. In fact, we've already started looking at some of the policy riders.”

It’s the latest potential twist that could affect budget negotiations between Democrats and Republicans if they ever get off the ground.

Complex negotiations in Washington often go on behind closed doors. But in these particular budget discussions, most of the talking appears to be taking place in a public forum, where the two sides aren’t really talking to each other.

Take this week’s developments. Democrats, who had been promoting a budget that would have stripped $51 billion off the president’s 2011 request, brought their number up to $70 billion this week -- just $6 billion away from the $76 billion in cuts that House leadership had initially said they would seek to cut. (That figure has since been dwarfed by the $100 billion figure that appeared in H.R. 1 -- and includes the $10 billion that has already been slashed through two short-term funding measures.)

“I think we’re far more than halfway,” Reid said of the proposal.

Perhaps in dollars they’re willing to part with, but not in steps across the Capitol.

House Republicans have been saying they’re not aware of the proposal. And while that may be unlikely, it apparently hasn’t been formally presented. According to Reid’s communications director, Jon Summers, Democrats aren’t planning to cross the Capitol rotunda to deliver their counter-offer -- House Republicans can come and get it.

“If they come over we’ll be happy to give it to them,” Summers said. “They can’t come over and talk to us because they don’t know what they want yet ... remember, we’re not the ones who walked away from the negotiating table.”

He’s referring to talks that broke down last week over where to begin the negotiations. House Republicans wanted to begin with the cuts in H.R. 1 -- that’s the $100 billion off the proposal bill they passed in February, but then the Senate nixed earlier this month -- as the baseline. Democrats want to negotiate cuts from current spending levels, instead. And both are phrasing their public counter-offers in the scope of a fiscal 2011 request that was never approved -- which gives them bigger numbers.

Perspective is going to matter in other regards, too. Democrats wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the additional cuts they offered, or what programs underlie the $6 billion that is proving to be a sticking point, but Republicans have accused Democrats of fudging projections of just how much their cuts would save.

It’s all made for some interesting pivoting, and opened the field to all kinds of political sideshows, not the least of which surfaced today when Sen. Chuck Schumer, chief of Democratic messaging, was caught coaching fellow senators to call Republicans’ proposals “extreme” -- yes, that is a term that’s gone national since the Nevada midterms -- on a telephone line he didn’t realize was open to the press. Not exactly a strategic surprise -- but still a political blooper that’s bound to sully already turbid negotiating waters.

“The discussions going on between the two majorities of the two houses are presumably trying to reach a conclusion,” Sen. Mitch McConnell said disapprovingly Monday.

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