Today, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) joined his colleagues to introduce a bill to stop the across-the-board budget cuts scheduled for March 1st with a balance of increased revenue and sensible investments. The Balancing Act will halt impending automatic federal budget cuts, known as “sequester,” which would threaten important national investments like those in medical research—a staple of Washington State’s economy. Read more here.
Yesterday Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced the Primary Care Workforce Access Improvement Act of 2013 (HR 487). Their bill promotes the training of primary care physicians in rural areas and tests innovative and cost-neutral ways to distribute graduate medical education (GME) payments for the purpose of increasing the number and quality of primary care physicians in the United States. This could prove helpful to the UW WWAMI program, which focuses on producing primary care physicians for a five-state region (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho). Learn more here.
Today the Senate is expected to proceed on HR 325, the House-passed “No Budget, No Pay Act of 2013” that would raise the debt ceiling through May while also making the payout of congressional salary contingent upon approval of a budget resolution in each chamber. The measure that passed the House earlier this month would suspend enforcement of the federal borrowing limit until May 18th and then raise the debt limit the following day to the debt accumulated to that point. The bill the House approved did not include cuts in exchange for the extension as House GOP members had previously demanded. The Senate is expected to approve the measure, although it may be amended and sent back to the House for approval.
Update: The House this afternoon passed their bill that would suspend the debt ceiling until the middle of May. The vote was 285-144. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Wednesday that the Senate will pass the House’s bill; the White House has indicated it will not block the measure.
The House will consider legislation today would provide for a short-term suspension of the nation’s borrowing limit, which likely removes the threat of a government default for at least four months. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has promised his members that he will work with House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) to advance a budget that will balance the federal budget in 10 years and said the automatic spending cuts due to hit March 2nd (sequestration) will remain in place unless other reductions are made. Democrats appear to be mildly supporting the House GOP’s efforts. The White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy on Tuesday saying President Obama “would not oppose a short-term solution to the debt limit.” The House is expected to pass the bill today.
The Senate has acknowledged that the four-month suspension could buy Congress time to work out a broader bipartisan budget deal. But, as always, the devil will be in the details. It does seem all but certain that large budget cuts are coming for FY2013 – even though this fiscal year is nearly half over.
The big questions remain: will cuts come through sequestration or a more targeted approach directed by Congress, will cuts be evenly applied to defense and non-defense discretionary programs, and will cuts to discretionary spending be tempered by savings found through entitlement reform?
Amid all the pomp and circumstance yesterday, House Republicans released their proposal to postpone a fight over increasing the nation’s debt limit by suspending it until May 19th. The measure, which is expected to be considered on the House floor tomorrow, would suspend the debt limit through May 18th and then provide for an automatic increase in the current $16.4 trillion limit to match the amount of the government’s outstanding debt plus new obligations “to fund a commitment incurred by the federal government that required payment before May 19.” The proposed legislation also would suspend salaries to lawmakers in either chamber that does not adopt a FY2014 budget resolution by April 15th, as required by the 1974 budget law.
If this legislation is approved by both chambers, it could take one of the three big “fiscal cliff part two” issues off the table and give lawmakers time to focus on two other fiscal issues confronting Congress: the sequester and the continuing resolution (CR) funding the government, both due to hit in March. Many Washington insiders believe the GOP plan might help take the pressure off spending battles on Capitol Hill by allowing Congress to return to creating budget resolutions in each chamber that could be debated in conference and passed through reconciliation. Many might recall this as “regular order” – something we haven’t seen in several years. According to CQ, a Senate budget resolution also could offer a path to greater deficit reduction over time because lawmakers could address specific programs and policies, a difficult proposition under continuing resolutions. Moreover, if the House and the Senate budget committees can work together in conference, it would make it possible to achieve deficit reduction through the reconciliation process, which forbids Senate filibusters.
However, it is not yet unclear if the Senate Democrats will go along with this strategy. We should know more in by next week as the clock is ticking down to the next fiscal crisis.