The political consequences for Republicans in Wisconsin are paying dividends for Democrats in DC.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is now pressuring House Speaker John Boehner to make a choice: negotiate with us, or side with the conservatives in your party, whom he described on a conference call with reporters Tuesday as “Scott Walker Republicans… using the budget to try and shoot the moon on [right wing] policy measures.”
This is of a piece with Schumer’s heads-you-lose, tails-you-lose offer to Boehner Monday, to dismiss the tea party constituency in his caucus and reach a bipartisan spending agreement with Democrats. Now he’s citing Republican defectors as evidence that the real goal in this spending fight is to impose a conservative agenda via the budget process, just like in Wisconsin.
“In the recent battle in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker went to war on his public sector unions…unions agreed to reduce their benefits,” Schumer said. “[Walker] went further and insisted on ending collective bargaining entirely…it’s not really about budget cuts.”
The House will vote Tuesday afternoon on a stopgap spending measure to keep the government funded for another three weeks. It contains spending cuts agreed to by the GOP leadership, but many rank and file conservatives are jumping ship despite those cuts.
“It doesn’t contain the extraneous riders they want,” Schumer said. “[A]bortion, global warming, and net neutrality as well…. that’s what’s driving the defections on the Republican side.”
Schumer said Democrats don’t want any of these controversial policy riders in longer-term spending legislation, which would fund the government through September.
“They also want to impose their entire agenda,” Schumer said. “[W]e do not want any of these controversial riders in the bill.”
There’s a division, even among conservative Republicans, over how important these riders are. Some, like Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and others, will vote no on any spending bill that doesn’t include their policy priorities.
“The discussion about policy riders is an artificial distinction,” Pence said. “It’s astonishing to me that providing funding for abortion providers is an ordinary part of the budget. Reducing funding for abortion providers is an unrelated policy riders…. Budgets, spending resolutions, are all about spending priorities, and they’re all about policy. To suggest that defunding Obamacare or defunding Planned Parenthood is a policy rider that’s in any way different than any spending element and decision is a false distinction.”
Other Republicans disagree. “Policy debates are probably better had after the government’s funded,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
“To me, the most important thing is to get the number down rather than exactly what gets funded and what does not,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). “I’m committed first and foremost to getting numbers down.”
The question for now is how many Republicans end up jumping ship, whether because they want further cuts, or they want their policy objectives included in the budget.
“We’ll see at the votes today,” Schumer said. “There’s progress in the cuts. If large numbers of Republicans, including in the freshman class vote no,” it stands to reason that their hang ups are over policy, not spending.
The risk here is that Republicans will relent on the riders only if Democrats accept the level of their cuts to domestic discretionary programs — $61 billion overall. Schumer disputed that. “It’s not a tradeoff no riders for all their numbers,” he said.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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