In a departure from the usual brinksmanship over funding the federal government, the U.S. Senate approved yesterday the recent bipartisan budget deal. Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan worked out a compromise on overall budget targets for fiscal years 2014 and 2015, replacing some of the “sequester” cuts that went into effect earlier this year. The deal passed the House last week with strong bipartisan support, including three of Iowa’s four representatives.
Senate Republicans were less supportive of the budget agreement than House GOP members, but nine Republicans crossed over to vote with the entire Democratic caucus, approving the deal by 64 votes to 36 (roll call). Iowa’s Senator Chuck Grassley was one of the 36 Republicans who voted no, along with possible future presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul. I have not seen any statement from Grassley’s office explaining that vote but will update this post as needed. UPDATE: Added a few comments from Grassley.
President Barack Obama will sign off on this agreement, but Congress still needs to pass an omnibus budget bill before January 15 to avoid another government shutdown. After the jump I’ve posted a statement from Senator Tom Harkin supporting the deal, as well as details on why some conservatives oppose this deal.
Statement from Senator Tom Harkin, December 18:
December 18, 2013
Harkin Statement Following Senate Approval of the Bipartisan Budget Agreement
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today issued the following statement on his support for the two-year bipartisan budget agreement after the U.S. Senate voted 64 to 36 to advance the measure. The agreement was approved by the U.S. House last Thursday and now goes to the President for his signature.Harkin chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“As a chairman, I know what it means to work with my colleagues to forge a bipartisan compromise that moves legislation forward. This compromise is not perfect- it’s not the bill that either side would have written on its own-but it helps our economy and prevents us from jumping from one artificial crisis to another. In this polarized climate, it says a great deal that Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan were able to find agreement. I commend them for their work.
“The budget agreement returns regular order to Congress by allowing us to write Appropriations bills and fund the priorities we all share like needed medical research, infrastructure projects, and education programs. In doing so, the agreement heads off the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, which have been so damaging to programs Americans rely on in their daily lives. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate and House Appropriations Committee to craft a strong appropriations measure that adequately invests in our nation’s future.
“I consider it a glaring omission, however, that this agreement does not extend unemployment benefits for Americans. The failure to do so is a cruel present this holiday season to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. I look forward to working with my colleagues when we return in January to fund this extension.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, voted against the bill, saying the bill would spend an additional $63 billion over the next two years while the government holds a $17 trillion debt. “To offset that higher spending, it raises revenue over ten years but spends that money in the first two years,” Grassley said on Tuesday. “Nearly all of the meager spending cuts come way down the road, in 2022 and 2023.”
The bill includes some agriculture sector-related provisions:
The legislation would authorize $404 million in funding for the National Bio and Agro-Defense facility (NBAF) in Kansas, which will eventually replace the functions of the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center located off Long Island. NBAF will study dangerous foreign animal diseases as well as emerging and new infectious diseases that can be transmitted between animals and people.
One section of the deal would authorize the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to collect fees of up to $150 per conservation plan to cover some of the costs of providing technical assistance for a producer or landowner. The agriculture secretary could waive fees for assistance provided to members of historically underserved groups, such as beginning farmers or ranchers, limited resource farmers or ranchers, and socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers.
Oxfam America said the legislation includes an “obscure policy change” that would result in less international food aid reaching hungry people. The organization said a proposed change would end the reimbursement USAID and USDA receive for excess costs associated with the requirement that 50 percent of all food aid be shipped on U.S. flagged vessels. Oxfam said that could cost USAID’s food aid program about $56 million annually.
Excerpt from The Hill’s report by Ramsey Cox and Erik Wasson:
Conservatives opposed the measure because it reduces the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester by $63 billion over the next two years. They argued the bill includes budgetary gimmicks that could be turned off by future Congresses to make up for the lost cuts. […]
The agreement does little to change the trajectory of federal deficits, which have declined with an improving economy but are slated to expand in the long run as Medicare and Medicaid costs rise higher.
Appropriators are already in talks on a $1.012 trillion spending bill for this fiscal year. The deal will also allow appropriators to work on new spending bills for fiscal 2015. A package of detailed appropriations bills has not passed Congress since 2011. […]
The bill approved by the Senate also includes a provision to prevent a cut in physician payments under Medicare known as the “doc fix.” It would give Medicare doctors a 0.5 percent payment increase through the end of March, paying the $8.6 billion tab with cuts to hospital funding in the future.
The bill would reduce future federal employee retirement benefits by $6 billion and cut military retiree benefits by $6 billion, something that sparked controversy this week. […]
The bill raises airline passenger fees from $2.50 to $5.60 per ticket, and includes $28 billion in future cuts to Medicare fees. The deal also uses revenue from new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and from higher premiums on government-backed private sector pensions.
From a post by Ezra Klein:
The total deal is $85 billion. About $45 billion of that replaces sequestration cuts in 2014. About $20 billion replaces sequestration cuts in 2015. About $20 billion is deficit reduction atop sequestration. […]
Spending will be $45 billion higher in 2014 than it would’ve been absent the deal. […]
The deal replaces about half of sequestration’s cuts to defense and non-defense discretionary spending in 2014. It replaces about a fourth of them in 2015. That means most of sequestration will go into effect in both years. […]
Whether this deal can be a model for future deals is an open question. The core principle of this deal is that Democrats didn’t have to touch entitlements and Republicans didn’t have to touch taxes. But a lot of the policies that made that possible got used up in this deal. It’s not clear that another deal like this would work in 2016.
From a post by Matthew Boyle on the conservative website Breitbart.com:
The budget deal passed the House 332-94 on Thursday evening, with 169 Republicans voting for it and 62 Republicans voting against it. The GOP support was thanks to Ryan’s selling of the plan among his colleagues, who largely trust him despite many figures of the conservative movement turning against him. Now, it turns out, Ryan used a series of statements whose veracity is questionable at best to convince his colleagues to support the bill.
Ryan’s claim, for instance, that this plan ends up resulting in $23 billion in total deficit reduction is not true. Ryan and Murray did not ask the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate interest payments on the $63 billion in increased spending that will need to be borrowed for the first couple of years of the budget. As such, the CBO score does not represent the full financial picture of the plan.
A Senate GOP aide with direct knowledge of these matters whom Breitbart News contacted estimated the interest payments over the course of the 10-year budget window on the $63 billion that will need to be borrowed to be approximately $8 billion. That means the plan increases spending by $71 billion and only includes $15 billion in deficit reduction in the out years of the budget window. […]
While the deal does have a net $85 billion in savings to replace the sequester, only $51 billion of that total comes from what Ryan describes as “specific, concrete spending cuts.” The other $34 billion comes from fee and revenue increases.