The first salvo in House Republicans’ next budget fight has already been fired. But instead of Democrats being the target, the shot was across the bow of fellow Republicans.
Ahead of President Joe Biden’s release of his own budget plan on Monday, the GOP-controlled House Budget Committee passed a budget blueprint for 2025 on Thursday. The plan, essentially an outline of annual spending, revenue and deficit totals through 2034 but almost entirely nonbinding, was approved on a party-line 19-to-15 vote.
The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) want to pass their budget through the full House ― something neither party has done in an election year since 2014, when John Boehner was still the House speaker and the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie was the box office champion.
Their plan, however, is likely to encounter resistance from vulnerable GOP House members, who will see little political upside and tons of risk from passing a meaningless document filled with potential vulnerabilities.
“Is that right?” Arrington asked when told how long it had been.
“Remember, my budget’s called ‘Reverse the Curse,’ so we’re going to reverse the curse on that,” he said.
Whether Republicans choose to pick a fight or not, the two documents present starkly different futures for the country: Biden would propose increasing taxes on the wealthy to pay for universal pre-kindergarten, temporarily reinstate the $300-per-month child tax credit, provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, and create a tax break for first-time home buyers. It would trim $3 trillion off the national debt in the next decade.
The House budget would instead make major but unspecified cuts to existing agency programs, aiming to shrink the national debt by about $14 trillion over the next decade while extending existing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
Though budget proposals are largely symbolic, projected spending cuts or higher revenues in the budget are used by opponents to say those who vote for it support cuts in specific programs or tax increases, and those claims can make for brutally effective campaign ads.
So what’s to gain from voting for a budget? Not much, practically.
The only binding part of a budget is the top-line number: the overall amount of money to be spent on federal agencies and programs outside of Social Security and Medicare in the next year. Had the Republican House and Democratic Senate agreed to a top-line figure last spring, the series of showdowns since fall over whether to shut down the government would have been avoided.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has given conflicting signals on whether he will allow a floor vote on Arrington’s budget. Johnson has already come under fire by some in his party for making unforced errors, and how he handles the budget could add fuel to the fire.
In a statement after the committee approved the budget, Johnson first praised it but stopped short of committing to a vote.
But on Monday, after the White House released its budget blueprint, he joined a statement with other House GOP leaders implying the budget will be the party’s official plan.
“The House’s budget plan for the next fiscal year, preceding the President’s proposal, reflects the values of hardworking Americans who know that in tough economic times, fiscal discipline is non-negotiable,” the group said.
Moderates, who have antagonized spending hardliners and members of the Freedom Caucus on fiscal issues, are unlikely to want a budget vote.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), a moderate Long Island Republican in a swing district, told HuffPost he would have to take a look at Arrington’s budget before deciding.
“I’ll have to review it first and make a decision based on the best interests of my district, but I haven’t read through anything yet,” D’Esposito said.
“I think we will come to the conclusion that we need to do our best to rein in Biden’s reckless spending where we can without cutting critical resources to the people that need it most.”
D’Esposito’s fellow New York Republican, Rep. Nick LaLota, said he has problems with the budget’s assumption regarding the cap on the tax break for state and local taxes paid, a big issue in high-tax states like New York.
“I’m focused on the Ways and Means Committee and the actual tax legislation” instead of the budget, LaLota told reporters Friday.
But Arrington said a budget vote would be helpful to Republicans by giving them a contrast with the White House’s budget or the lack of a budget plan in the Democratic-held Senate.
“If we can get this to the floor and Republicans sign it, all they have to do it is hold it up at forums and say, ‘My Democrat opponent is not telling the truth — he’s lying about my record. I voted for the balanced budget,’” Arrington told HuffPost. “If they sign on to it, they can use it as a shield.”
But while the White House budget gets its claimed deficit reduction from politically unrealistic tax increases, the House Budget Committee plan relies on similarly untenable — and often unspecified — spending cuts in agencies’ annual funding, which allows it to claim balance without touching the popular Social Security and Medicare programs.
The lack of specifics led the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget to call out the committee plan as “completely unrealistic and counterproductive.”
“This budget combines genuine savings, which we applaud, along with large unspecified cuts ― including to appropriations and improper payments – which will almost certainly not materialize,” said CRFB President Maya MacGuineas in a statement.
Despite the political risk and rickety assumptions, there’s one powerful GOP group in the budget’s corner: the Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Budget Committee who voted for the plan, said he thinks there should be a floor vote and questioned why moderates would oppose one.
“Why are they here? To get reelected? Like, why come to Congress if all you’re doing is trying to get reelected?” he asked.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the chairman of the Freedom Caucus and, like Roy, a member of the Budget Committee, told HuffPost he “anticipates” a floor vote.
“I think it would be a great thing if we showed the American people that it was more than just a campaign slogan, that we were willing to try to address the spending, the deficit and the debt that’s causing 40-year-high inflation under which they’re suffering,” Good told HuffPost. “We’ve got to differentiate.”
Good hinted sidestepping a floor vote could make it harder for Johnson to hold on to his job, which he assumed after former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) became the first speaker to be ousted on the floor.
“Frankly, just as a side note, the previous speaker promised a floor vote on a balanced budget a year ago,” Good said. “And that’s why he’s the previous speaker, by the way, one of the many reasons.”