Lauren Schneiderman
By Vicki Needham, Mike Lillis and Bernie Becker - 12/11/13 05:15 PM EST
The
budget deal worked out by House and Senate negotiators is on the verge
of unraveling over the exclusion of federal unemployment benefits,
several leading Democrats warned Wednesday.
The lawmakers are
outraged by a GOP move to add the Medicare “doc fix” to the package but
not a continuation of unemployment benefits — a strategy they say could
sink the entire package by scaring away Democratic votes.
Reps.
Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Sandy Levin (Mich.) said the move creates a
“new dynamic” undermining Democratic support for the plan announced
Tuesday by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “I
think it puts at risk the whole bill, and it surely puts at risk my
vote,” said Levin, the top Democrat at the House Ways and Means
Committee.
Van Hollen echoed that message.
“This does now add a new dynamic that could upset the applecart that could put at risk the budget agreement,” he said.
It's
not clear whether Democrats would sink the first bipartisan budget deal
in years over the unemployment insurance (UI) issue. But with GOP
leaders intent on leaving town on Friday — and with GOP leaders showing
little appetite to extend the benefits before they expire on Dec. 28 —
the Democrats' only real leverage is to threaten to do so.
“Obviously,
once the budget passes you don't have much leverage in terms of votes
on things that remain,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said
Wednesday. “That may be the last vehicle.”
Some Democrats on
Wednesday morning appeared poised to back the Ryan-Murray budget
agreement. But they also cautioned that the addition of the Medicare
language without a UI extension could erode that support.
“It's
something we should do, but why wouldn't we do unemployment insurance if
we're doing that?” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked
Wednesday morning after a meeting of her caucus in the Capitol.
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By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — Backers of a narrowly drawn budget deal are selling
it as a way to stabilize Congress' shaky fiscal practices and mute some
of the partisan rancor that has helped send lawmakers' public approval
ratings plummeting. But the bipartisan pact doesn't solve long-term tax
and spending issues, leaving liberals and conservatives alike grumbling.
House and Senate floor votes are being sought on
the plan announced Tuesday by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic
Sen. Patty Murray, and applauded by the White House, with the aim of
securing passage before lawmakers go home for the holidays.
But skepticism surfaced in both the Democratic and Republican caucuses.
Sen.
Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and leading deficit hawk, panned the
new deal in an interview Wednesday, saying it fails to address core
issues of wasteful spending in Washington. He said it was probably "the
best" that Ryan and Murray could get at this time. But said he was
disappointed in its failure to address core fiscal issues such as
duplication and wasteful spending in Washington.
The agreement,
among other things, seeks to restore $63 billion in automatic spending
cuts affecting programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon. The deal to
ease those cuts for two years is aimed less at chipping away at the
nation's $17 trillion national debt than it is at trying to help a
dysfunctional Capitol stop lurching from crisis to crisis. It would set
the stage for action in January on a $1 trillion-plus spending bill for
the budget year that began in October.
The measure unveiled by
Ryan, R-Wis., and Murray, D-Wash., blends $85 billion in spending cuts
and revenue from new and extended fees — but no taxes or cuts to
Medicare beneficiaries — to replace a significant amount of the mandated
cuts to agency budgets over the coming two years.
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House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., left, and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patt …
The package would raise the Transportation Security
Administration fee on a typical nonstop, round-trip airline ticket from
$5 to $10; require newly hired federal workers to contribute 1.3
percentage points more of their salaries toward their pensions; and trim
cost-of-living adjustments to the pensions of military retirees under
the age of 62. Hospitals and other health care providers would have to
absorb two additional years of a 2-percentage-point cut in their
Medicare reimbursements.
The plan doesn't attempt to resuscitate
earlier attempts at an accommodation that would have traded tax hikes
for structural curbs to ever-growing benefit programs like Medicare and
Social Security. But it would at least bring some stability on the
budget to an institution — Congress — whose approval ratings are in the
gutter.
"Our deal puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling
back ... harmful cuts to education, medical research, infrastructure
investments and defense jobs for the next two years," Murray said.
Ryan
is set to pitch the measure to skeptical conservatives at a closed-door
GOP meeting on Wednesday. Democrats are set to discuss it as well, but
the measure won an immediate endorsement from President Barack Obama if
only tepid approval from top Capitol Hill Democrats like House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking Democrat on the
Budget Committee.
"Tonight's
agreement represents a step toward enacting a budget for the American
people and preventing further manufactured crises that only harm our
economy, destroy jobs and weaken our middle class," Pelosi said in a
statement.
View gallery
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murr …
"This agreement makes sure that we don't have a government
shutdown scenario in January. It makes sure that we don't have another
government shutdown scenario in October," Ryan said. "It makes sure that
we don't lurch from crisis to crisis."
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House Budget Dem: If There's A Medicare Payment Fix Vote, Let's See Unemployment Insurance Too
AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
House Democrats are urging lawmakers to include a vote on
unemployment insurance alongside a budget deal if Republican lawmakers
insist on including a short-term fix to the Medicare payment system as
well.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday Rep. Chris Van Hollen,
the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, standing along side
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), said Republican lawmakers have begun pushing to
include a Sustainable Growth Rate fix (often called a short term doc
fix that addresses a Medicare payment problem) alongside the budget
proposal introduced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI)
and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA).
Physicians
who treat patients under Medicare are scheduled to take a huge pay cut
in the new year if Congress doesn't enact this "doc fix." Many lawmakers
have expressed support for reversing the pay cuts baked into current
law should, but such a fix is costly.
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