White House, leaders hard-sell budget deal
Mnuchin, Pelosi face skeptics from both parties as recess looms
WASHINGTON — White House officials and congressional leaders defended a controversial budget deal on Tuesday, hoping to assuage concerns from conservatives and liberals ahead of a crucial House vote this week.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with Senate Republicans at a lunch on Capitol Hill, conveying that President Donald Trump fully supported the deal and would sign it into law. Republicans felt burned by Trump last year after they voted on a budget deal they thought he supported, only to have the White House withdraw his backing at the last minute.
“The four (congressional) leaders and the president are fully on board with this,” Mnuchin told reporters as he left the meeting.
Still, the effort to whip up political support showed signs of strain.
A number of conservative Senate Republicans announced their opposition to the two-year, $320 billion deal, complaining that it adds to the ballooning deficit while doing nothing to constrain spending. Mnuchin defended the agreement, saying it was crucial to increase military spending and suspend the debt ceiling through July 2021, lifting the prospect of a full-blown financial crisis later this year.
R-Wis., Mnuchin But Sen. said the Ron deal he’d Johnson, should told have included changes to take the threat of future government shutdowns off the table.
“If we don’t get a structural reform in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling, I don’t see how I can support this thing,” Johnson said.
Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., said he declared his opposition to the deal during the lunch with Mnuchin. And while some senators said Mnuchin had effectively conveyed Pentagon debt budget crisis, the stakes others and for looming left the the lunch with the treasury secretary unpersuaded.
Sen. John Kennedy, RLa., said Mnuchin’s message to senators amounted to, “‘Yippee yippee yay, I made a deal.’ ” “I didn’t learn anything … It was more of a rah, rah session,” Kennedy said, adding he was undecided how he’d vote. “I think it says about the United States Congress, both sides, that we really don’t have a commitment to getting control of the credit card.” On the Democratic side, some Jeff Merkley, liberals including D-Ore., Sen. expressed consternation about a side agreement struck by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to keep controversial policy provisions off spending bills. This would include agreeing not to limit Trump’s ability to transfer money to build his border wall. The practical implication of the agreement seems limited, since any such changes would require bipartisan support anyway, but White House officials were touting it as an important win. from Despite rank-and-file the complaints lawmakers of both major parties, White House officials and Democratic and Republican leaders all argued that the deal was the best they could get in divided government, and blamed their political opponents if it wasn’t any better.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and vote-counter, said the deal was better than any of the alternatives.
“The notion of shutting down the government or defaulting on the America debt — those are unacceptable,” Durbin said.
Exiting the GOP lunch, Mnuchin asked how he would defend the deal against its GOP critics. “Well we needed a debt ceiling increase, that was incredibly important,” Mnuchin replied. “And again we couldn’t get a deal without getting bipartisan support so the Democrats, they compromised on a lot of things along the way and we had to make certain compromises.”
The budget deal, announced Monday, would suspend the debt ceiling through July 2021 and raise the budget for the military and many other programs for two years. Lawmakers would still need to approve individual spending bills, but the agreement is expected to make it much less likely that there will be a government shutdown when existing agency budgets run out Oct. 1. But the budget also appears to lock in a large gap between tax revenue and government spending, which could breach $1 trillion this year and continue in perpetuity if changes aren’t made.
The government must borrow money to finance that gap and pay interest on the growing debt.
Lawmakers were rushing to cut the deal because Mnuchin had warned that the Treasury could run out of money by early September. Congress is set to go on a lengthy August recess soon, leaving legislators little time to maneuver.
The House is expected to vote this week, with the Senate to follow next week.