Break the gridlock in Congress
House Speaker John Boehner explains budget progress this week in Washington. Credit: Getty Images
Albany-style dysfunction has migrated south to Washington.
New York, the state that could never deliver an on-time budget, is poised to do it this week. Meanwhile, Washington is budgetless six months into its fiscal year and flirting with shutting down the government next week. As in the Albany of old, the important dealing in Washington basically features a small number of key players and is happening out of public view. That's not good.
Democrats laid the groundwork for paralysis when they failed to pass an on-time budget last year with a Democratic president and majorities in the House and Senate. Now a relatively small group of tea party-backed Republican House members has Congress tied in knots.
That "perfectionist caucus" drove the Republican House majority to make unrealistically deep cuts in a continuing resolution, which is used to temporarily fund the government when it has no budget. As a result, the bill was DOA in the Senate. The tea party representatives want the federal government to live within its means. It should, and Democrats share the view that cuts must be made. But if that's the goal -- not just scoring political points with tea party supporters -- Republicans should make a deal with Democrats on spending for the rest of this year, declare victory and move on.
There are more important fights to wage over next year's budget, Medicare, Social Security, defense and tax reform. That's where the big money is, and where changes will have to be made to rein in record deficits.
It's time to get to that main event, which is also when Congress should debate funding for Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Protection Agency and health care reform now attached as riders to the House continuing resolution. Forcing unrelated issues into a tar ball of a budget deal is all too Albanyesque.
So far the perfectionist caucus has shown no inclination to compromise. Not even after other Republicans introduced legislation for a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget and a cap on federal tax revenue, a sop to voters and House members who embrace tea party ideas. The Constitution is appropriately hard to change, so the amendment is all but sure to fail -- and good, because it's a bad idea. It would cripple the federal government. Still, gridlock is likely to be the only achievement of an ideologically intransigent perfectionist caucus.
President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats understand the need for spending cuts. The White House floated a proposal this week for $20 billion in cuts on top of the $10 billion enacted as part of previous agreements that extended the continuing resolution to April 8.
That $30 billion is very close to the amount Republican leaders sought to cut before their aggressive freshmen demanded $61 billion. It's more than enough to extract at midyear from nonsecurity discretionary spending, which accounts for a very small portion of what Washington spends. So it's time to deal.
Washington should take a page from Albany's new playbook. Form alliances across party lines, isolate the extremists and get the public's business done.
