Federal workers were back on the
job Thursday, streaming into government offices in Washington and opening
national landmarks such as St. Louis' Gateway Arch after the 16-day shutdown
that ended when President Barack Obama signed a spending and debt ceiling
agreement passed by Congress on Wednesday night.
The protracted brinksmanship
flirted with a possible U.S. default before ending when Republicans caved to the
insistence of Obama and Democrats that legislation funding the government and
raising the federal borrowing limit should be free -- or at least mostly free --
from partisan issues and tactics.
After all the bickering and
grandstanding, the billions lost and trust squandered, the result amounted to
much ado about nothing.
"I am happy it's ended," Vice
President Joe Biden said when he arrived at the Environmental Protection Agency
with coffee cakes handed out to returning workers. "It was unnecessary to begin
with. I'm happy it's ended."
In the basement of the U.S.
Capitol, there were exuberant hugs as furloughed colleagues were welcomed back,
but there was also bitterness toward the elected legislators in charge
upstairs.
A common refrain was the
sarcastic question: "How was your vacation?" Responses were often nonverbal --
an eye roll, a head shake, an angry glare, the occasional ironic laugh.
The agreement to end the shutdown
and avert a potential government default came Wednesday from Senate leaders
after House Republicans were unable to get their own caucus to support a GOP
proposal.
Hardline Republicans, whose
opposition to Obama's signature health care reforms set the shutdown and debt
ceiling crisis in motion, got pretty much zip -- except maybe marred
reputations.
"To say we as Republicans left a
lot on the table would be one of the biggest understatements in American
political history," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted.
However, it all amounts to the
cliched kicking of the can down the road, because the deal passed by Congress in
lightning fashion Wednesday night and signed by Obama in the wee hours of
Thursday only funds the government through January 15 and raises the debt
ceiling until February 7.
The agreement set up budget
negotiations between the GOP-led House and Democratic-led Senate intended to
reach a broader agreement on funding the government for the fiscal year that
ends on September 30.
Ideally, a budget compromise
would ensure government funding and include deficit reduction provisions that
would prevent another round of default-threatening brinksmanship in three
months' time.
Obama planned a live statement
at 10:35 a.m. ET, about an hour after the leaders of the House and Senate budget
committees -- Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Democratic Sen. Patty
Murray of Washington -- were having a symbolic breakfast to get the dialogue
started.
They noted that their
negotiations -- called a conference between their two committees to work out
differences in budgets passed by each chamber -- differed from a special
committee set up under 2011 legislation that failed to agree on broader deficit
reduction steps.
"Chairman Ryan knows I'm not
gonna vote for his budget. I know that he's not gonna vote for mine," Murray
told reporters, saying the goal was to find "the common ground between our two
budgets that we both can vote on."
Everything came together
Wednesday on a frenzied night of deadline deals. The Senate brokered a bill to
end the shutdown that began on October 1 and raise the debt limit, then passed
with broad bipartisan support.
The GOP-led House also passed
it, with about 80 Republicans joining a unified Democratic caucus in support,
while well over 100 House Republicans voted "no."
Had Congress not approved a debt
limit increase, the government would have lost its authority to borrow more
money to pay all of its bills. Social Security checks and veterans' benefits
could have stopped. The markets could have gone into a tailspin.
While some Republicans, such as
tea party favorite Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, claimed moral victories in energizing
their movement, House Speaker John Boehner didn't even pretend his side came out
victorious.
"We fought the good fight; we
just didn't win," he told a radio station in his home state of Ohio.
Cruz, despite being in the
Senate, is credited with spearheading the House Republican effort to attach
amendments that would have dismantled or defunded Obamacare.
All were rejected by the
Democratic-led Senate, and Obama also pledged to veto them, meaning there was
virtually no chance they ever would have succeeded.
Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of
New Hampshire called the House GOP tactic of tying Obamacare to the shutdown
legislation "an ill-conceived strategy from the beginning, not a winning
strategy."
The Senate's Democratic leader
said he never wants to go through the recent turmoil ever again.
"Let's be honest: This was pain
inflicted on our nation for no good reason, and we cannot make -- we cannot,
cannot make -- the same mistake again," Reid said Wednesday.
But former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich predicts the tea party and staunch conservatives in the GOP will be
more energized after not getting the anti-Obamacare amendments they wanted.
"They will be more embittered,
more angry. They will find more ways to go after Obama because they can't find
any way to get him to negotiate," he said, adding that he expects Obamacare to
become the defining issue of the next two elections cycles.
As Obama walked away from a news
conference Wednesday night, he was asked whether he thought America would be
going through this brouhaha again in a few months.
His answer: "No." We'll see.
Approval of the temporary
spending plan meant the return to work of more than 800,000 furloughed
employees, while more than 1 million others who've been working without pay will
get paychecks again.
A provision in the agreement
guaranteed back pay for government workers for the shutdown.
However, the bill that passed
Wednesday night doesn't address many of the contentious and complicated issues
that continue to divide Democrats and Republicans, such as changes to
entitlement programs and tax reform.
"We think that we'll be back
here in January debating the same issues," John Chambers, managing director of
Standard and Poor's rating service, told CNN on Wednesday night. "This is, I
fear, a permanent feature of our budgetary process."
Obama said Wednesday night that
he's not in the mood for more of the same, saying politicians have to "get out
of the habit of governing by crisis."
"Hopefully, next time, it will
not be in the 11th hour," he told reporters, calling for both parties to work
together on a budget, immigration reform and other issues.
The partial government shutdown
that lasted 16 days has come at a steep cost. Standard and Poor's estimated it
took a $24 billion bite out of the economy.
Then there's the impact it had
on politicians' image. If there's one thing polls showed that Americans agreed
on, it's that they don't trust Congress -- with Republicans bearing more blame
than anyone else for what transpired.
Both sides kept talking past
each other, with Republicans insisting for a time that defunding, delaying or
otherwise altering Obamacare must be part of any final deal. Democrats,
meanwhile, stood firm in insisting they'd negotiate -- but only after the
passage of a spending bill and legislation to raise the debt without
anti-Obamacare add-ons.
In the end, Democrats largely
got what they wanted after some last-minute talks by Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Reid hailed the agreement he
worked out with McConnell as "historic," saying that "in the end, political
adversaries put aside their differences."
McConnell said any upcoming
spending deal should adhere to caps set in a 2011 law that included the forced
cuts known as sequestration.
"Preserving this law is
critically important to the future of our country," McConnell said of the Budget
Control Act, which resulted from the previous debt ceiling crisis in
Washington.
Republicans did get a small
Obamacare concession: requiring the government to confirm the eligibility of
people receiving federal subsidies under the health care program.
The pork projects added the the bill were shocking, read this:
$2.2 billion. That's the amount in additional cash authorized for a project that
involved a dam and decades-old locks on a river that flows through Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky. Sounds kinda fishy,
but a Democratic senate aid and a Republican senator say it's on the level. The
aide tells CNN that McConnell didn't push for the project to be included. And
Sen. Lamar Alexander, who's a key figure on the committee that oversees what
water projects get what money, says he and another senator asked for the cash.
He tells CNN's Chris Frates the new money -- which more than triples the
original $775 million -- will save the federal government many millions because
contracts won't be canceled due to work stoppages. Still, the Senate
Conservatives Fund calls the money a "Kentucky Kickback."
This one's a lot less controversial than the river project money. Congress OK'd
$450 million for rebuilding projects in flood-struck areas of Colorado. That's
well over the limit of $100 million for the Department of Transportation as
allowed in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act. Wednesday's authorization
used similar language to a bill that died last month after the House declined to
vote on it, according to Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. He said Coloradans had
been resilient, but they needed the money because "it's time to let us get to
work" rebuilding roads and bridges wiped out by overflowing rivers.
There were more agencies that got big money in the bill. Agencies that fight
wildfires could get as much as $636 million, depending on how bad it gets in the
next year. The mine safety department is getting a bump in the fees it can keep,
a $1 million increase to $2.49 million. A watchdog group meant to guard
Americans' right to privacy against overreach by government cyberintelligence
will get $3.1 million, which they could use considering the year they've had
dealing with revelations about the super-secret National Security Agency's
programs. The Hill, a political newspaper, reports that's double the top amount
the five-member panel has been given before.
Down on page 20 of the bill, it says there will be no cost of living adjustment
for members of Congress for the next year. Actually, it's not that surprising.
Congressional pay has held steady for years. They last received a raise four
years ago. And you thought you had it rough. Wait, you don't make $174,000 a
year?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.