Harry Reid, GOP clash over proposals to trim government spending

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 | 9:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Today was supposed to be the day the Senate would vote on competing proposals to trim the fiscal 2011 budget, a move that was unlikely to yield any final resolution on the matter, but would still be a concrete salvo in what has, so far, been mostly a war of words.

But now it appears that may not happen. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Senate Republicans of recoiling from that agreement – first, to vote on a House Republican proposal that cuts $57 billion below fiscal 2010 levels, and then, to consider an Obama-backed version that slivers out $4.7 billion – and Democrats are leaping on their reticence as a sure sign that the House Republicans’ bill is too much to take, even for their counterparts across Congress.

“It seems Republicans themselves must have finally read their own budget, because now even they’re running away from it,” Reid said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “They don’t want to vote on their own bill.”

But that's not the whole picture, say Republicans. They're accusing Reid of trying to play politics with the Senate schedule, explaining that just because a budget vote isn't happening now, doesn't mean it isn't happening at all.

"When we finish the patent bill, there will be votes on both the House-passed bill and the status quo Democrat bill. That has never been in question," said Don Stewart, communications director for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday. "My guess is that Sen. Reid’s speech today had more to do with an attempt to distract you from Sen. Manchin’s speech and the need to fund the Cowboy Poetry Festival than anything based in reality."

There’s been little agreement between Republicans and Democrats in the various rounds of budget bickering that have transpired over the past several weeks – save a brief moment of concord when both parties agreed to pass a two-week continuing resolution to buy time for negotiations, a move that was necessary to avoid a shutdown.

The two bills that the Senate was going to consider – H.R. 1, and then the Obama-backed plans – almost assuredly were not going to pass, as neither party’s version was satisfactory to the other side.

The double vote in the Senate was intended to be a gateway to negotiations, under a framework that both House and Senate leaders of both parties agreed to at the White House last week, shortly after Congress passed the two-week stopgap measure.

Now, it appears, that may not be enough time. House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol today that House leaders may pursue another stopgap measure – this time up to a month, with deeper cuts than the $4 billion that were agreed to in the two-week patch that currently funds the federal government through March 18.

That hasn’t exactly ameliorated the standoff between Democrats and Republicans, but it has, at least, shifted the conversation.

No one is currently talking in the language of shutdowns. But Democrats, led by Reid, are taking pains to distinguish “Republican” from “Tea Party” in their most recent round of rhetoric – apparently attempting to create an escape hatch for Republicans to depart from the hard line of their more conservative colleagues that leaders appeared to have adopted.

Fissions between establishment Republicans and Tea Partiers have started to appear. Reid tried to press on those points Tuesday morning, outlining what “Tea Party” proposals would mean for Nevada if they are passed.

“It will fire 700,000 Americans – including 6,000 Nevadans,” Reid said. “It would pull the plug on 600 renewable-energy jobs at the largest solar plant in Nevada.”

Reid also listed cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, job-training centers, community health centers, neighborhood safety and Homeland Security programs as areas that would result in job losses for hundreds of Nevadans and destabilize thousands more.

“The plan the Tea Party pushed through the House is an irresponsible plan. It’s a reckless plan,” Reid said.

House Republican leaders are defending their bill, and have accused Democrats of not coming to the table with serious enough counter-proposals.