Shutdown avoided this time around, but real budget wrangling will follow

By Karoun Demirjian

Monday, April 11, 2011 | 4:22 p.m.

Breathing a sigh of relief because the government didn’t shut down over the weekend?

As critical and monumental a resolution as last week’s compromise to strip $38.5 billion from the budget was, it’s only an introductory step toward the real wrangling that’s to come in the next few weeks, as lawmakers turn their attention to deeper cutbacks for fiscal 2012 and raising the fast-approaching $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

The Treasury Department is estimating the country will hit the debt ceiling sometime in mid-May, a collision that would bring about all the resultant effects of a government shutdown, as well as pitch the country to default on loans to an extent that some economists say could make the world markets mimic the 2008 recession, or even worse.

To avoid that, the White House has made overtures to Republicans in Congress to try to get them to agree to clear a debt limit lift without any heavy horsetrading.

Surprise: it’s not working.

“Mr. President, not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill,” House Speaker John Boehner said Saturday. “And I can just tell you this: there will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it.”

That means for Democrats, congratulations circulating about keeping Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio funded, safeguarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule-making authority on climate change or even keeping Yucca Mountain funding off the table may be severely premature.

Democrats aren’t breaking a sweat yet.

“They sure didn’t do very well with the riders this time did they,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “The country is into saving money, they’re not in for ideological tantrums.”

But Boehner’s stance won’t just be applicable to the debt ceiling calculus to which they’re directed. We’ve already seen, from the last round of the budget process (which technically isn’t over yet; the House and Senate still have to vote this week on a final fiscal 2011 package) that neither party believes it stands to gain from the federal government imploding on itself, even temporarily. Playing heck with the country’s international obligations, too, only raises those stakes, making the potential fallout even more politically, as well as economically, damaging.

But while opinion polls taken over the last several weeks may have shown the country sided with the Democrats’ approach to budgeting over Republicans, even Democrats who railed against him say Boehner played his hand very well.

“I think the Republicans used the riders very effectively to get what they wanted,” said Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, adding that she believed Democrats met the Republicans “far more than halfway.”

The numbers support that assessment. Back in January, before the Tea Party pressed its point, Boehner wanted to strip the fiscal 2011 budget by $73 billion off the president’s request. Congress ended up cutting $78.5 billion -- not the way negotiations usually go, though most members, and the president, are now proud of having exacted the largest spending cut in U.S. history.

“There were far too many cuts in many programs, especially health and human services ... I wish we hadn’t done that,” Reid said of the final deal on Monday. “It’s hard to get to $78 billion. We were able to do it. And as much as we did, the long-term debt problems of this country are still there. We’ve got to do better than what we’ve done here.”

Boehner ultimately benefitted by waiting out the Tea Party wing of his own party, until leaders voluntarily sheathed the swords with which they wanted to hack $100 billion off the budget. But that 11th-hour strategy is not something Democrats necessarily want to let play out again.

The White House is going to try to capitalize on whatever momentum there is from the budget resolution to nab the talking points spotlight on budget matters going forward by outlining a deficit reduction strategy. It’s not tied specifically to the debt limit, or next year’s budget, but it is meeting Republicans on the turf they seem to have moved toward taking in the last week: reducing entitlement spending, especially to Medicaid and Medicare.

“I’m glad the president’s going to address those two issues,” Reid said. “I think we have to do something about Medicare and Medicaid.”