Share
Print
A House vote on the 2012 budget resolution is slated for Friday, but the GOP must first push through the 2011 spending bill despite growing opposition from some Republican lawmakers who say it cuts far too little.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who was largely deemed the victor in last week's budget standoff between Republicans and Democrats, must sell this plan to the most fiscally conservative in his party. He made the case Monday in a USA Today opinion piece that it is time for the House to pass the 2011 budget and move onto the 2012 spending plan, which he said advances the Republican cost-cutting effort "from saving billions of dollars to saving trillions of dollars."
A vote on the 2011 budget is scheduled for Wednesday.
But many fiscal conservatives, including Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have announced they will not back the 2011 plan because it cuts only $38.5 billion, a historic amount for a single-year reduction but about $23 billion less than what Republican lawmakers said was needed to fulfill their campaign pledge to reduce spending to 2008 levels.
Jordan, who heads a large faction of conservative House Republicans as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he expects significant GOP opposition when the 2011 budget comes up for a vote.
Even with a 24-seat majority, Republicans will almost certainly need the help of fiscally moderate Democrats to get the 2011 plan passed, Republican aides told The Washington Examiner, because many GOP conservatives and freshmen backed by the Tea Party will vote against it.
The federal government is operating under a temporary funding measure that expires Thursday at midnight.
Influential conservatives are pushing the GOP's far right flank to oppose the 2011 bill. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh panned the deal Monday and said the media and political pundits were too eager to praise Boehner, who he said should have pushed harder for deeper cuts.
"It doesn't appear that the rank and file is buying any of the spin," Limbaugh noted.
Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Republicans may be angered that some of the cuts appear to be from areas of the budget President Obama had already intended to cut or target funds that haven't been allocated yet for specific projects.
"I suspect some of the cuts may not be real cuts," Edwards said, adding that "there may be a bit of a backlash" from conservatives.
Tea Party activists plan on making their disappointment known to the GOP leadership and individual Republican members.
Lorie Medina, a leader of the Texas Tea Party, told The Washington Examiner that the 2011 budget agreement has weakened the GOP's hand in the 2012 budget negotiations.
"They are setting a precedent with Democrats that they are going to give in, they are going to cave," Medina said.
