Today, the White House has issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP) in support of the budget deal that will soon pass the House. In it’s support of the passage of HR 1314, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the Administration’s specifically cited its support of the inclusion of funds for education, job training and research.
Category: Budget
House Goes First on Budget Deal
At midnight last night, the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015 was introduced in the House, and the House Rules Committee is expected to consider the measure tomorrow paving the way for the full House to consider the legislation Wednesday. Passage is expected Wednesday and the measure will move to the Senate Wednesday night. The Senate is expected to consider and pass the measure by the end of the week.
The timing will give Boeher plenty of time to pass something before he retires and the elections for Paul Ryan as Speaker are held Thursday as well as before the national debt limit expires on November 3rd.
After the measure passes, the House and Senate Appropriations committees will begin working with the new top line budget amounts, known as 302(b)s, and those committees will begin on crafting new FY16 appropriations bills to pass before the December 11th Continuing Resolution expires.
Congress and White House Agree on Budget Deal
Late yesterday, a potential budget agreement between the White House and Congress was released. It would boost both defense and domestic spending over the budget caps for the next two years, and lift the nation’s debt limit through March 2017. If the deal holds, it would eliminate the dual threats of a government shutdown and a debt default until after the November 2016 elections.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, which has not yet been finalized, would boost defense and domestic spending above sequestration levels by $50 billion in the first year and $30 billion in the second year. In each year, there would be an additional $16 billion spent using the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. It would also curtail a huge increase in Medicare premiums due to go into effect in January for some beneficiaries.
Specifically, the deal would:
- Increase discretionary spending by $80 billion above sequester-level spending caps (PL 112-25), with the increase split evenly between defense and nondefense programs. Sequester relief of $50 billion would be applied to FY 2016 and $30 billion for FY 2017.
- Include an additional $32 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations war account funding, split evenly between FY 2016 and FY 2017. That means spending would rise by $66 billion above the caps for FY 2016 and $46 billion above the caps for FY 2017.
- Draw offsets from other legislation, such as the House-passed 21st Century Cures medical research initiative (HR 6).
- Raise the debt limit, giving Republicans the opportunity to sell the package as raising the debt limit in exchange for constraints on spending. Democrats will insist that it is a so-called clean debt limit increase that is attached to other legislation. Two aides said the government’s borrowing authority increase would likely last through March 2017.
While it is no grand bargain like the Murray-Ryan Budget Deal from 2013, it will eliminate the risk of sequester cuts and provide some certainty in federal budget and appropriations for research universities.
Debt Ceiling Plan Alludes House GOP
The U.S. government is 12 calendar days – or 7 scheduled congressional work days – from reaching the debt limit without a clear plan of what to do. GOP leaders are so far refusing to advance a ‘clean’ debt ceiling bill that both President Obama and Democrats would support. The problem there is that the GOP leadership can’t find the 30 Republican votes they would need to join with all 188 Democrats to pass such a proposal.
One option under discussion is a proposal from the conservative Republican Study Committee, which would require House committees to produce legislation to enact spending cuts contained in the budget resolution – basically a series of cuts to equal the amount raised for the debt ceiling. This type of measure is unlikely to get a vote and even if it did, the President and Senate Democrats would block its passage. They are insisting on a ‘clean’ debt ceiling increase or suspension.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has estimated that he would exhaust “extraordinary measures” to extend the government’s borrowing authority by November 3, 2015.
Read more from Politico here.
New Debt Limit Deadline: November 5th
Congress will need to address the debt limit by November 5th or risk a default on the nation’s debt. The deadline is the first the Obama administration has set for raising the $18.1 trillion debt limit, and comes in somewhat earlier than what most experts had predicted. The federal government reached its borrowing limit in March and has since been deploying “extraordinary measures” to free up room beneath that limit.
That new deadline has major implications for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), likely the next Speaker of the House (elections will take place October 8th to replace current Speaker John Boehner, who is retiring at the end of October). Congress will need to figure out how to increase the nation’s borrowing limit, prevent a government shutdown, and keep money flowing to highway projects – all in a 30 to 60 day period. And all three will fall on a House Republican Conference in flux, with a new speaker, majority leader, and majority whip expected to be elected next week but not take over until November.
The administration has repeatedly said it will not negotiate raising the debt limit, but congressional Republicans in the past have pressed for spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Prior to the deadline, there had been talk of tying the debt limit to budget talks. But the month-long gap between the debt-limit deadline (November 5th) and expiration of government funding (December 11th) complicates matters.