Federal safety net under attack...

It’s Ryan vs. McConnell on entitlement reform

The speaker’s plan to revamp the federal safety net faces stiff resistance from his own party in the Senate.

By SEUNG MIN KIM and RACHAEL BADE

Speaker Paul Ryan’s dream of overhauling the nation’s entitlement programs in 2018 will soon run into a harsh reality: His own party isn’t on board.

The Wisconsin Republican has detailed an ambitious effort to dramatically reshape Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs that the GOP has long targeted as ripe for reforms. But bring it up with key Senate Republicans and House GOP moderates and they blanch — seeing a legislative battle that may not be winnable and that may not be worth it in an election year where control of Congress is up for grabs.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has all but ruled out the idea, saying publicly that he doesn’t expect to see welfare and entitlement changes on the agenda next year, particularly if it's done in a party-line manner.

“The sensitivity of entitlements is such that you almost have to have a bipartisan agreement in order to achieve a result," McConnell told reporters at a news conference last week.

Other key Republicans are clearly loath to turn to such a sharply partisan pursuit after grueling fights over Obamacare and taxes. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a swing vote during the Obamacare repeal fight this summer, quickly changed the subject when asked about Ryan’s entitlement reform push.

“Well, I’d like to see us pivot to infrastructure. We’ve talked it all year, the president talked about it,” Capito said. “I think it could be a bipartisan exercise. I would certainly hope so.”

The clash illustrates the dilemma that congressional GOP leaders face early next year: How to sketch out an election-year agenda that unifies House and Senate Republicans and satisfies the conservative base without further risking their already-imperiled majorities.

With Democratic opposition to welfare and entitlement changes all but certain, Republicans would have to use powerful reconciliation procedures that can evade a Senate filibuster. But that would require nearly complete unity among Republicans on a joint House-Senate budget and on what controversial policy modifications to make.

Republicans in both chambers will discuss their 2018 legislative strategy at their annual GOP retreat at The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in late January. But Senate GOP leaders are already casting doubt on using reconciliation to target the programs.

“All you have to do is the math,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “Unless it’s bipartisan, then you’re talking about reconciliation which means you have to pass a budget, you have to get reconciliation instructions and you have to get 51 Republicans all to vote for it.”

The No. 2 Senate Republican added: “That’s a pretty steep hill to climb.”

McConnell’s narrow majority has already been burned trying to tackle entitlements. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska helped tank the Obamacare repeal effort because it included massive cuts to Medicaid.

And on the cusp of the midterm campaign, other key GOP figures are in a much more bipartisan mood.

“We’re going to have a narrow majority next year,” said Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, about an entitlements fight. “We’re going to have our hands full with nominations and an infrastructure bill and a bipartisan agenda.”

Still, those sentiments are running headfirst into the hopes of House conservatives, not to mention those of the powerful speaker, whose years-long pitch to privatize Medicare has endeared him to the right.

Ryan’s conference bellowed when Congress temporarily raised the debt ceiling in September without any corresponding spending cuts. And conservatives have been pressing Ryan ever since to call up legislation to reduce the biggest drivers of the national debt.

In order to win votes for a budget in late October that paved the way for the tax overhaul, Ryan promised leaders of the conservative Republican Study Committee to vote sometime next year on deficit reduction legislation. Republicans have since then discussed enacting work requirements for food stamps and other programs for the poor, as well as Medicare changes to curb spending.

“We have to address entitlements, otherwise we can’t really get a handle on our future debt,” Ryan said on CBS “This Morning” last week. He also specifically singled out programs for low-income people: “We, right now, are trapping people in poverty. And it’s basically trapping people on welfare programs, which prevents them from hitting their potential and getting them in the workforce.”

But even some of Ryan’s rank-and-file are wary of tackling entitlements. Hillary Clinton carried about two dozen GOP-held swing districts in 2016. And with evidence of a Democratic wave already building, centrist Republicans fear cuts to programs that support the most vulnerable could cost them their seats.

Those same centrists balked last summer when House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) proposed axing $200 billion from such programs in her fiscal blueprint. Centrists wrote to Ryan opposing those cuts, and the speaker is bound to run into the same resistance next year.

In an interview off the House floor, New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance urged GOP leaders to be “cautious” when proceeding to entitlements. He would rather focus on a bipartisan issue like infrastructure that is well received by his constituents.

“There is a safety net that I support,” said the moderate Republican, adding, “I think infrastructure would be a good thing to tackle in the New Year.”

Longtime centrist leader Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who’s retiring at the end of 2018, was more blunt. He said a House vote on entitlement reform would put vulnerable swing-state lawmakers in an even shakier position in the midterm elections. And all for nothing, since it will never pass the Senate, he added.

“The longer I’m here, the more I’m convinced that we don’t do things to help members in swing-state districts. We do things to help people in the really red districts to keep the base pacified,” he said. “That’s not how you hold the majority.”

When asked about entitlement reform, several other House GOP moderates responded that they’d prefer to tackle infrastructure, as did Collins in the Senate.

And yet Ryan might still press ahead. The votes are likely there in the House to pass cuts or changes to food stamps, disability insurance, and even Medicare and Social Security, two programs President Donald Trump vowed to leave intact on the campaign trail. And Ryan could try to move entitlement reform through the House to exert pressure on the Senate to take up the issue.

Ryan could also draw on a powerful ally in the White House. While Trump has steered clear of suggesting Congress curb Medicare, he’s spoken in recent weeks about reforming welfare programs.

And there are GOP senators who are fine — or even excited — about taking up an overhaul of entitlement or welfare programs. One is Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees much of the federal safety net.

“I’d love it,” added Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). “That’s a heavy lift, particularly after the tax bill … but we know we’ve got to rein in these programs in order to make them sustainable.”

Republicans could also choose to use their reconciliation powers for other purposes.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) noted that Republicans may want to use reconciliation to make technical corrections to the GOP’s sweeping tax overhaul that passed just last week; fixes are expected to be required for the tax plan, and reconciliation would avert the need to get buy-in from Democrats on a bill they uniformly opposed.

Another option would be yet another push to dismantle Obamacare. While McConnell has thrown cold water on the idea, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he wants to take another crack at Obamacare and will not vote for a budget that doesn’t include reconciliation instructions for health care.

Still, even Graham acknowledged that “getting the Senate to make any substantial changes to Medicare in a partisan fashion is gonna be a bridge too far.”

Others, simply, aren’t saying much about whether they want to take up a fight on entitlements.

“I have no idea,” said Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, the most vulnerable GOP senator up for reelection next fall, as he breezed into the Senate chamber for the final vote of the year. “Merry Christmas.”