House Budget Measure Is Pulled
Washington Post
By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Friday, November 11, 2005; Page A01
House Republican leaders were forced to abruptly pull their $54 billion
budget-cutting bill off the House floor yesterday, amid growing dissension in
Republican ranks over spending priorities, taxes, oil exploration and the reach
of government.
A battle between House Republican conservatives and moderates over energy
policy and federal anti-poverty and education programs left GOP leaders without
enough votes to pass a budget measure they had framed as one of the most
important pieces of legislation in years. Across the Capitol, a moderate GOP
revolt in the Senate Finance Committee forced Republicans to postpone action on
a bill to extend some of President Bush's most contentious tax cuts.
The twin setbacks added to growing signs that the Republican Party's
typically lock-step discipline is cracking under the weight of Bush's
plummeting approval ratings, Tuesday's electoral defeats and the increasing
discontent of the American electorate. After five years of remarkable unity
under Bush's gaze, divisions between Republican moderates and conservatives are
threatening to paralyze the party.
"The fractures were always there. The difference was the White House was
always able to hold them in line because of perceived power," said Tony
Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "After Tuesday's election, it's 'Why are we
following these guys? They're taking us off the cliff.' "
Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) did not dispute that.
"One of the challenges of any second-term administration is you always lose
a certain amount of identification with the Congress, because everybody in the
Congress in the first term knows you'll be out there in the next campaign with
them," Blunt said in an interview yesterday. "Your motives are always a little
more suspect when you don't have to face the voters again."
The House budget vote was supposed to reestablish the Republican commitment
to a smaller government that would change the federal approach to Medicaid,
food stamps, agriculture subsidies, student loans and a host of other
programs.
But moderate Republicans made it clear that was not the way they wanted the
party defined. The GOP leadership had already abandoned a provision in the
budget that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil
drilling, a policy goal Bush has embraced since he came to office. But it was
not enough to secure the votes of moderates who said remaining policy changes
were hitting the nation's most vulnerable citizens just as the party was
preparing another round of tax cuts that would benefit the most affluent.
"I've told the leadership they're asking for the dismantling of the
Republican conference" with this budget, said Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert
(R-N.Y.), a leading moderate. "The clear evidence from Tuesday's election
results is that Americans are moderate. They need to start listening to
us."
For their part, House conservatives said the leadership had erred in
accommodating the left-leaning wing of the party on oil drilling, because it
undermined support for the bill among staunch GOP loyalists.
"The question for the House leadership is: How far do you go in order to get
the liberal Republican vote? Obviously, they pushed it too far," said House
Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), who estimated that he
and more than 25 other Republicans considered rejecting the budget once the
leadership removed provisions to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and
offshore. "When they pulled it out, [moderates] still didn't support it. And a
bunch of guys elsewhere in the country said, 'Wait a minute. What happened to
the energy?' "
House leaders said they could not corral enough votes before rank-and-file
members needed to dash home for Veterans Day events. They vowed to try to pass
the budget next week, but lawmakers conceded it will not get any easier.
Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee broke up in disarray yesterday
morning after failing to secure support for a tax package that would have
extended the president's 2003 cut to the tax rates on dividends and capital
gains. Joining the panel's Democrats, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) declared
she could not support a tax cut that primarily benefited the rich as Congress
was trying to cut programs for the poor. But when the panel's chairman, Charles
E. Grassley (R-Iowa), tried to win approval of a tax package without the
investment tax cuts, panel conservatives refused to go along.
The cracks were showing in other areas, as well.
In an 82 to 9 vote yesterday, the Senate approved an amendment to the
defense authorization bill by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to require Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to disclose to Congress the existence of
clandestine terrorism detention facilities in foreign countries. The existence
of such facilities was disclosed Nov. 2 by The Washington Post, and the Senate
vote suggests Republicans are feeling heat from voters on the way Bush is
conducting the war on terrorism.
For the second time, the Senate last week approved a measure ardently
opposed by the White House to restrict and codify interrogation methods, this
time unanimously. Vice President Cheney's personal overtures to exempt the CIA
from the restrictions have had little effect.
"If necessary, there will be a third time and a fourth time and a tenth
time, until we win," said the provision's author, Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.).
Both chambers of Congress are moving toward limiting some of the far-ranging
surveillance and search powers lawmakers granted the administration following
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
And the Senate is insisting on a provision in its budget-cutting bill that
would eliminate a White House-backed fund to entice managed care companies into
the Medicare program. When Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)
was asked about a White House veto threat over the measure, he called it
"absurd."
Bush's call to make his first-term tax cuts permanent has had so little
support that Grassley drafted a bill that would simply extend some of the Bush
tax cuts for a single year. Even that may go nowhere.
"It should go away," Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) said of the tax
package. "We ought not to be involved in it."
Voinovich said the budget rebellion reflects increasing voter unease about
Republican priorities: "There's uncertainty. There's anxiety," he said. "It's
the common sense of the American people looking in on us and questioning what
we're doing. People say, 'This doesn't make sense to us.' " A crucial test of
White House clout will come next week, as the Senate and House attempt to
complete the fiscal 2006 Defense Department spending bill. McCain originally
attached his amendment on interrogation techniques to the Senate version, and
the White House has threatened to veto any bill that contains the
provision.
But McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war and a possible 2008 GOP
presidential candidate, is couching his effort in moral terms. "A clear and
firm commitment on the part of the United States government that we will not
only not torture, but we will not treat people in a cruel or inhumane fashion
is absolutely vital," McCain said after a speech yesterday at the American
Enterprise Institute.
Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
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