House GOP Having Trouble Passing Cuts

by Stuart Shapiro

The Republican line has always been, “we’ll pass those budget cuts, we’ll make the tough choices.”  Passing the Paul Ryan budget blueprint doesn’t count as Brian Buetler explains:

But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts. . .

So what happened this week when the House had to vote on a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development?

. . . their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218.

A majority of the country opposes austerity and it turns out; so does a majority of the House.  Now, the question is, will Speaker Boehner let a radical minority shut down the government and strangle the economic recovery?  I’m worried about the answer.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.