Senate opposes budget plans; John Ensign ‘reluctantly’ supports

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 | 2:16 p.m.

It was bipartisan, but it sure wasn’t pretty.

As expected, the Senate today voted down two budget proposals that have been circulating Congress for the last few weeks: first, House Republicans’ proposal to cut $57 billion from present spending levels, or $100 billion off what President Obama originally requested for fiscal year 2011, and then the president’s scaled-back proposal, about $50 billion less than what he’d wanted before (though only about $5 billion below what current spending levels are).

While there were no party variations in the “ayes” column -- only Republicans voted for the House Republicans’ bill, and only Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents for the president’s -- there were plenty of defections when it came to voting them down.

Three of the Senate’s most stalwart Tea Party Republicans voted against the House Republicans’ bill on the grounds it did not go far enough.

It’s a complaint that several Senate Republicans made, but few ultimately decided to let that dictate their vote, including Nevada’s John Ensign, who said he would only “reluctantly” support the bill.

Ensign criticized the Democrats’ preferred proposal as a "ridiculous" attempt at reforming the budget, but he and other Republicans weren’t the only ones to take a stand against it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lost 10 Democrats, as well as Independent Bernie Sanders, in the vote on his party’s proposal Wednesday afternoon, as centrists made a public declaration that the Democrats’ bill was also too weak a gesture in the face of a mounting deficit.

The outcome seems to bode better for the Republican argument as lawmakers head into negotiations.

Even Reid said he considers the Democrats’ proposal to be a “step forward” but that ultimately, Congress needs to cut more than was on the table in that bill.

But that doesn’t mean the negotiation process that now commences will eventually move Congress toward adopting something akin to H.R. 1 -- which is officially dead now.

While the Republican Senate caucus backed the House’s measure, the gesture was largely a formality -- Republican senators have said they have no intention of letting the specific cuts in the bill escape their tweaks, though they aim to cut a similar volume of dollars from the budget once all is said and done.

Congressional leaders have nine days to come up with a proposal that retains the support of the House and win a super-majority of senators before the federal government runs out of money again after March 18.