Nevada delegation backs two-week budget stopgap

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 | 12:49 p.m.

A two-week budget stopgap passed overwhelmingly in the House and in the Senate, with all five Nevada lawmakers on board. But that, it seems, has precipitated a battle of who won this round -- an important mantle to claim given the much higher political stakes ahead in the next two weeks.

“I am pleased House Republicans followed our lead by including cuts proposed by Democrats in their measure to keep the government running for two weeks,” Reid said Wednesday, after the Senate voted 91-9 to keep the country funded via a continuing resolution that cuts about $4 billion from present spending levels. “They now have a responsibility to set aside threats of government shutdown if they don’t get everything they’re demanding.”

Over in the House though, Republicans weren’t quite ready to cede credit for the bill they wrote -- which Reid’s office actually initially panned -- quite yet.

“Americans have a right to know: where is the Senate Democrats’ plan to cut spending and fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year?” House Speaker John Boehner said at a press conference Wednesday morning -- he was also reported as saying at a meeting of the Credit Union National Association Wednesday that Reid “owes the American people an explanation” for why Reid hasn’t unveiled his own plan to slice spending below fiscal 2010 levels.

If he doesn’t come up with a unique proposal, Boehner added, he expects the Senate to follow the House’s lead and pass H.R. 1, the fiscal 2011 funding bill that slashed $61 billion from the budget. The House passed that bill on a near party-line vote two Saturdays ago; the House passed the two-week funding measure by a vote of 335-91 on Tuesday.

On the sidelines though, other Republicans are taking a more tempered tone. Nevada senator and spending reduction hawk John Ensign, who rarely applauds Democrats on spending issues, released a statement after the Senate passed the two-week stopgap bill Wednesday that was mostly laudatory, sparing his Senate Democratic colleagues criticism for their greater budget stance -- that was reserved for the Obama administration.

“Today is the first day in the 14 years that I have been in office where I have witnessed both sides of the aisle coming together to cut billions of dollars from the government’s budget,” Ensign said. “Today’s vote showcased that we are all capable of raising our thumbs up to cut spending temporarily, but now the real work begins as we start to tackle President Obama’s budget that continues to spend, tax and borrow away our freedom.”