Lawmakers hope for more harmony
Washington — With a new speaker in the House and a major budget-and-debt deal completed, lawmakers hope they are entering a welcome period of calm — even boredom — on Capitol Hill.
“I hope it means that there will be more bipartisan cooperation,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., “that we won’t have the brinksmanship, and the cliffs, and the drama, and the uncertainty.”
But some things haven’t changed.
The three dozen or so conservative hard-liners in the House who pushed out former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, haven’t gone anywhere. Even though most of them ended up supporting newly elected Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., they served notice that they will be watching closely to make sure he delivers on promises of a more inclusive legislative process.
And the budget-and-debt deal approved by Congress this past week does not take all fiscal clashes off the table. It raises the government’s borrowing limit through March of 2017, forestalling a market-rupturing default in early November and putting off future debt ceiling debates until there’s a new president. It also sets federal budget levels for 2016 and 2017, committing lawmakers to bottom-line spending levels for the next two years.
But members of Congress still must fill in the details for each of those budget years, and they have until Dec. 11 to pass a package of spending bills for 2016.
It’s an exercise that’s ripe for conflict.
Any number of policy fights could flare on the must-pass legislation, including renewed demands from conservatives to strip money for Planned Parenthood. That’s the issue that precipitated Boehner’s resignation when hard-liners rebelled because he didn’t push the fight to the point of possible government shutdown. It could threaten a shutdown again.
As the Feb. 1 presidential caucuses in Iowa approach, the 2016 candidates in the Senate, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, could seize on the spending debate to stage fights on one issue or another. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., eager to hang onto his slim majority and protect vulnerable GOP senators up for re-election in politically divided states such as New Hampshire and Illinois, is not interested in any more conflict.
Majority Republicans are trying to play down the possibility of unrest around the spending process, given that the bottom-line numbers have been set and policy fights are a regular feature of negotiations on spending bills.