After House approval, Senate must vote to avoid government shutdown

By Karoun Demirjian

Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 | 1:58 p.m.

WASHINGTON—A budget to fund government through the rest of of the fiscal year is halfway through Congress today, after the House passed it by a vote of 296-121, supported equally by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

But that means a lot more Republicans than Democrats voted against it, which could spell problems for the Senate as it takes up the bill hoping to avert a government shutdown sometime in the next 24 hours.

House Speaker John Boehner had been pressing Democrats to sign off on the budget’s conference report, suggesting Republicans would toe the line for a vote. But 86 -- including Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei -- didn’t.

"I think there's a lot of really great stuff in it...but you know what, $8 billion cut in the context of a trillion dollars is not much," Amodei said. "I don't think looking at the big picture, at $15 trillion in debt, I think we have to try to take a bigger bite out of some of those numbers."

That doesn’t jibe with the position of the other Nevada Republican in the House, Rep. Joe Heck.

“I think it’s great,” Heck said Friday before the vote. “For the second year in a row, the budget’s being cut...and what’s nice about it is that they didn’t go through it with a broadsword and do across the board cuts.

“Some programs are actually beefed up, others have taken cuts. That’s what this process is supposed to be about,” Heck continued. “I think the appropriators from both parties and both chambers did the job that we were sent here to do.”

Democratic Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley also voted in favor of the budget compromise.

“Hopefully this is a sign we can put the partisan bickering behind us and return our focus to our most important priority: standing up for the middle-class by creating good paying jobs that can't be shipped overseas,” Berkley said following the vote.

But the budget is not a done deal.

The Senate did not immediately move on the bill after it passed the House Friday, and there were signs senators might be seeking more time to examine and deliberate over it: the House passed two short-term budget extensions (one for 24 hours, and one for 7 days), apparently to give the Senate wiggle room, if needed.

(They did so without pomp and circumstance or complaint. People really do seem to be feeling more conciliatory as we head into the holiday season.)

The Senate is coming back into session Saturday morning anyway to vote on the House-passed version of a payroll tax-cut extension, something everyone expects Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada will amend before he puts it to a final vote. They could consider the budget bill Saturday morning as well.

But when they vote, it sets up an interesting choice for Nevada’s senators.

As the leader of the Senate Democrats and a former appropriator who’s trusted Appropriations Committee chairman, Daniel Inouye, signed off on the conference report, Reid is expected to back the compromise bill.

But Sen. Dean Heller could be another story.

Heller’s office didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about how Heller might be leaning on the forthcoming budget vote. But he’s voted against nearly every other brink-of-shutdown compromise to come before Congress this year, complaining that they do not cut enough funding to earn his support.

The difference this time is this is close to a year-long budget, which in form at least, is what Heller has been clamoring for.

Heller has been calling for Congress to “do its job” and pass a budget through promoting his “No Budget, No Pay” act, which would cut the lawmakers’ salaries until they produce a federal budget.

However, just because you like the idea of a budget doesn’t mean you have to like what’s in it.

Heller has already voted against the spending reductions that served as the guidelines for the cuts in this budget: the spending caps that restricted the budgeting in this latest bill were agreed on in this summer’s deal to raise the national debt limit.

Heller didn’t think it cut enough, and voted against that this August.

The exact time of the Senate vote on the budget resolution has not been scheduled.