As partisan fervor hijacks budget talks, deficit hawks face lonely battle
WASHINGTON — Rep.
Mike Kelly, a longtime car dealership owner from Butler, sees budgets in uncompromising terms: You should not spend money you don’t have without a way to pay back the loan. And you should definitely not ask for more money when you’re already in the hole.
After all, Mr. Kelly swept into office in 2011 on a wave of nationwide outrage over government spending, soundly defeating a Democratic incumbent with the backing of the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement.
That was then. Mr. Kelly’s views have not changed, but many of his Tea Party colleagues have been willing to trade away their once-rigid fiscal beliefs in exchange other priorities — much to Mr. Kelly’s frustration.
In July, Congress approved, and President Donald Trump signed, a budget agreement that increases government spending by $320 billion over the next two years and raised the debt limit.
“‘Why did you vote for that? You’ve always said you don’t want to see the debt increase,’” Mr. Kelly said he asked fellow Republicans. “‘Well, there was more good than there was bad,’” he said they told him.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, but, geez-oh-man!’” Mr. Kelly exclaimed. “Where does it end? And the answer is it doesn’t. And why doesn’t it? Because there’s no such thing as a ceiling on our debt.”
Now, chagrin from losing the argument on that broad spending agreement — coupled with political chaos rippling through Capitol Hill from House Democrats’ formal impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump — is making for an especially dysfunctional appropriations process.
Congress, which returned last week from a twoweek recess, has less than a month to figure out how to hand out some $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending over the next fiscal year. Lawmakers missed the first deadline of Sept. 30, the end of the 2019 fiscal year, but passed a temporary extension to fund the government until Nov. 21.
Political flashpoints have always tended to dominate federal spending discussions, with relatively small budget items attracting outsize attention and jeopardizing much larger, noncontroversial programs.
But that phenomenon has been magnified with Mr. Trump’s demand for billions of dollars to fund a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. The border wall has sharply divided lawmakers and caused 35-day government shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — to start this year.
Border funding debates boiled up again in June, when progressive House Democrats rebelled against approving $4.6 billion in emergency funding to deal that, they argued, would fail to hold the Trump administration accountable for conditions at immigration detention centers. The deal was passed largely by Republicans, with most Democrats voting against it, leaving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a political bind.
Meanwhile, Ms. Pelosi is charging ahead with a formal impeachment inquiry of Mr. Trump. The Senate is preparing to receive articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving, according to a person familiar with a meeting of Senate lawmakers last week.
That timeline would all but guarantee lawmakers would approve another temporary extension that would move the next fiscal deadline near the end of January 2020.
A consequence of all the partisan fervor and delays, however, has been to distract lawmakers from the humble conversations about fiscal responsibility.
A soaring deficit
Passing a budget and controlling the federal deficit are among the most basic and sweeping of Congressional priorities, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which has advocated for a smaller federal deficit.
Next year, the federal deficit is projected to reach $1 trillion, the largest ever in a good economy. Federal borrowing, mostly in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds sold to the public, has grown to total roughly $22 trillion.
Politics and increasingly extreme policies are hijacking what should be bipartisan negotiations to bring down the deficit, she said. The 2017 GOP tax cuts reduced government revenue, while hefty proposals from Democratic presidential candidates, like Medicare For All, stand to blow a hole through the budget if not paid for with new taxes. Of 297 Democratic debate questions, Ms. MacGuineas said, not one has involved the budget deficit.
“It’s a really difficult issue to build a whole bunch of momentum around,” she said. “There’s so much political reward for a policymaker who’s giving you tax cuts or spending
increases. And there’s really no upside for being fiscally responsible.”
In essence, the budget deal in July to hike spending was perhaps a final blow for those who care about the deficit. Yet it was also a remarkable compromise, one of the few moments of agreement among the White House and Congressional leaders, with Mr. Trump praising everyone involved. Both sides feared another (widely unpopular) government shutdown.
Even with Mr. Trump’s support, 123 House Republicans, including Mr. Kelly, voted against the budget deal.
In the Senate, 23 Republicans gave a thumbs-down in the 67-28 vote. Pennsylvania’s senators split, with Republican Pat Toomey voting against the deal for continuing to put the country on “an unsustainable fiscal path.”
“Our country does not have a revenue problem,” Mr. Toomey said in a statement. “We have a spending problem. And until Congress is willing to make tough spending choices, the national debt will continue to rise and trillion dollar deficits will be the norm.”
Democrat Bob Casey, meanwhile, praised the deal for lifting budget constraints, which he said “endangered critical investments in our schools and infrastructure.”
In September, Mr. Kelly was still fuming over the evasive answers from his Republican colleagues who, supposedly, care about the shrinking federal deficit.
Mr. Kelly, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee who was instrumental in pushing through the GOP tax cuts at the end of 2017, does not see tax cuts in terms of a deficit-causing problem.
“I would rather trust our citizens with spending their own money the right way, than a government program that is so heavily burdened at the top with layer after layer after layer of costs,” he said in the interview.
Last week, Mr. Kelly said he would be willing to support yet another tax cut — but he cited impeachment inquiry as a roadblock. The partisan mud-slinging wins the day once again.
“With impeachment crazed Democrats in charge, it’s unlikely that Congress will be focused on pocketbook issues in the near future,” he lamented.