Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Policy Racket

Harry Reid, GOP emerge from budget discussion with no agreement

It’s been said almost bi-weekly since the beginning of the year, but the government really does appear to be headed for both a shutdown and a showdown.

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had an emergency conference with President Obama this morning to try to reach some kind of accord on the present fiscal year’s budget, but emerged with no agreement. In fact, with only three and a half days left on the clock, they seem to be moving further apart.

It seemed, at the start of the week, as if Democrats and Republicans had at least agreed upon a number -- $33 billion -- to cut from spending, if not how and where they would meet that goal. But Boehner now appears to be backing away from that agreement.

“$33 billion in cuts is not enough, particularly when it is achieved in large part through budget gimmicks,” Boehner spokesmen wrote to reporters following the White House meeting.

Boehner had told members of his caucus Monday night to start preparing for a government shutdown -- a warning that was welcomed by more than a few House Republicans.

House Republicans haven’t seemed to be in a compromising mood lately, a stance they defend by pointing to the dire situation posed by the country’s debt crisis.

The gap between Republicans and Democrats grew even further Tuesday though, with the release of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s fiscal 2012 budget, which proposes slashing $6.2 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade by, among other ventures, slicing some popular social programs, chiefly, Medicaid and Medicare.

So far, the most severe projected social program cuts lawmakers have had to contend with have been for funding things like Planned Parenthood, Head Start early childhood education programs, and homeless veterans' housing services -- important to those who utilize the services, but on a much smaller order of magnitude than anything like Medicaid or Medicare.

The release of Ryan's budget puts hard text behind the alarms Democrats have been sounding for the duration of this whole budget bruhaha: that Republicans’ short-term cuts to current fiscal spending are simply inroads to making broad, almost philosophical changes to some of the country’s most depended-upon federal programs.

The release of that budget sets up what could be an almost endless round of wrestling between the two sides -- another reason that Democratic lawmakers are rushing to clear the table of the present budget bill. But unless Democrats cleave to Boehner’s suggestion of another one-week spending measure, or Boehner bites at a compromise at the last minute (which is much closer than three days from now, given that a bill still has to be drafted before it can be passed), it seems that the government is primed to close, at least for a little while.

So what does that mean for Nevadans? Well, government workers employed in non-essential services -- essential services encompassing such things as national security units, air traffic controllers or federal prison guards -- should brace to be potentially furloughed for as long as the budget is suspended.

For the laypeople, the mail will likely come through -- including Social Security checks, so long as the claim being made isn’t new. At least that’s what happened during the last shutdown, which was the longest in U.S. history.

But it won’t be painless for government-dependent across the board: veterans’ services are likely to be halted until the government turns on the spending spigot again.

The severity of the shutdown will depend in large part on how long the shutdown lasts. If it’s just for the weekend, it’s unlikely anybody will feel it at all; but if the standoff creeps on for weeks, it’s anybody’s guess.

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