House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) publicly reminded House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) Tuesday that his goal of cutting domestic spending below sequestration levels will soon run headlong into the brick wall of the GOP’s own vote-counting problem.
Citing conversations he has had with House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY), Hoyer said he doubts the Republican votes are there for the spending cuts Boehner is proposing.
“Hal Rogers thought it was pretty difficult to mark at [pre-sequestration spending levels], as you know,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing. “I think if you ask Mr. Rogers he would say it would be very, very difficult to responsibly mark at the numbers of which Mr. Boehner speaks. So we’ll have to see whether they do that, but if they bring those appropriation bills to the floor, they’re going to be very difficult bills for them.”
Translation: Without Democratic help, this GOP leadership can’t budget, can’t fund the government, can’t really pass any of the handful of must-pass legislation that comes to the floor each year.
By way of further explanation, the Ryan budget resolution isn’t a bill that can become law, but rather a blueprint, establishing overall spending levels for specific segments of the federal goverment. The hard work of approproating those monies to specific departments, agencies and projects comes later. That’s when abstraction becomes reality and lawmakers struggle to fund their preferred programs — and ones favored by voters — within the constraints Ryan imposes. Republicans hope to pass the Ryan budget in the House this week.
That reality, Hoyer suggested, means the GOP should temper the its enthusiasm for the sort of partisan policymaking included in their entire budget.
“In my view if you took all the Democrats out of the House and all the Democrats out of the Senate and the Ryan budget passed and then they tried to implement it through the 12 appropriations bills and the Ways and Means Committee … they could not get the votes on the House floor or the Senate floor to pass it,” Hoyer said. “And the reason for that is because the draconian actions they would have to take, and the adverse impact it would have on working Americans, middle class Americans, and their country, would be such that they would ultimately have to vote against their own policies made real.”
