Senate rejects both parties’ spending plans
The Senate soundly rejected a House-passed package of Republican spending cuts Wednesday, shifting the burden back onto Speaker John Boehner to show more flexibility in budget talks with the White House and Democrats.
“With this vote out of the way, we’re gonna do some serious negotiations,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev). “This paves the way to get something done.”
The 56-44 roll call fell short of a simple majority let alone the 60 votes needed for Senate passage. Just as in the House last month, the measure won not a single Democratic vote—a remarkable failure given the political pressure on moderates running in 2012 to embrace more spending reductions.
Instead, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who had been targeted by the GOP, told his colleagues that the House bill “has too much hate” for him to accept. And Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a second moderate in play, said the speed and size of the House cuts— $61.3 billion compressed in the second half of this fiscal year—could “cause just as big a crisis as our failure to deal with our long term structural debt.”
That said, the Democratic unhappiness in the Senate is clearly there to be mined if Boehner recalibrates the House approach. Just moments after the Republican defeat, a Democratic budget alternative fared even worse, 58-42, as moderates bolted in a signal to the White House it must also move more to the center to hold their support in the future.
Boehner’s initial reaction was to maneuver for more time, saying Democrats had still failed to come up with a legitimate counter-offer to the House bill. “It’s time for Washington Democrats to present a serious plan to cut spending,” the speaker said. But given their own divisions, Senate Democrats are clearly moving now to broaden the discussion to include mandatory savings—as well as tax loophole closings—to address deficit-reduction.
Each party faces challenges on the edges.
This is most pointed for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), fighting to hold onto his old traditional northeastern GOP moderates while new tea party conservatives defect on the right.
For example, after adjusting for defense dollars, the House-passed cuts truly represent a cut of $66 billion from domestic and foreign aid programs, a 14 percent reduction. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who had been outspoken in her criticism of the bill, ultimately fell in line Wednesday with two other New England Republicans facing election next year: Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts. But on the right, conservative Sens. Rep. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, two freshmen elected in November with tea party support, joined with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to vote no as a protest that the cuts did not go far enough.
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