Special Update: Budget and Appropriations

Date: March 11, 2011

By Washington Partners

A headline in Friday’s POLITICO was enough to give even the wonkiest of education advocates a headache: “Tired of Budget Debate? It Has Only Just Begun.” Say it isn’t so! After 6 months of non-stop wrangling, this week the Senate finally took two budget votes that leadership had hoped would help “reset” the FY 2011 budget debate.

First, the Senate rejected the House-passed HR 1, a bill that would slash education spending by 15% and come in at $61 billion less than the spending plan submitted by the President a year ago February. A second plan, crafted by Senate Democrats that cut $6 billion from the funding level included in the Omnibus bill that failed in late December, met similar defeat.

All Democrats voted against HR 1, but 11 walked away from the Democratic alternative for a variety of reasons—some said it was too big, others claimed it was too small. Though most Senate Republicans voted in favor of HR 1, many quickly issued press statements bemoaning the deep cuts to critical social programs but said the resistance of Democrats to significant funding cuts gave them little choice. The hope was that these votes would clear the air so the hard work of hammering out a budget compromise could finally begin.

So what happens next? As the headline suggests, the House GOP remains committed to their $61 billion plan. Speaker Boehner replied when asked if he was willing to compromise, “Why negotiate with myself?” referring to the lack of a Democratic plan.

March 18th is the next deadline for passage of a budget to avoid a government shut down, and with the divide this deep, the House Appropriations Committee is hard at work drafting yet another 3-week continuing resolution that would cut another $6 billion in funding. On a somewhat positive note, there was a meeting yesterday among representatives from the House and Senate leadership and the White House that indicated talks might get underway shortly. With Vice President Joe Biden still tweeting from a resort on the Black Sea, these talks realistically can’t begin until next week—another source of frustration for Members of Congress.

In a speech at the Center for American Progress on Wednesday, Assistant Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke for many in the Democratic Caucus when he urged the President to join the debate and endorse the idea that the goal needs to be reducing the deficit, not just cutting a small sliver of the budget that funds domestic programs. Defense, entitlements and revenues must be addressed if the Congress is serious about getting the government’s fiscal house in order.

Throughout the week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on Capitol Hill, trying to gain traction on the President’s FY 2012 plan for spending at the Department of Education. His remarks and his plan were met with annoyance from House Republicans, frustrated that the budget reflects wishful thinking rather than current law and slightly friendlier House Democrats who would rather hear him talk about the devastating impact of the cuts to education in HR 1. Aspirin all around!

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