Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will force Republicans to vote on the House GOP budget, Medicare privatization and all. That’s a shrewd move no matter the result — either a lot of Republicans vote for it, and then own it politically, or it splits the party and validates the view that supporting the plan is an extreme position.
But it’s also the Senate, and that means the minority can swing right back at the Democrats.
“While Sen. Reid may think that’s a clever move, how is he going to explain to his members that they have to vote on the President’s budget, or any of the House Democrat budgets that they can’t possible support,” notes a Senate Republican aide. “The President’s budget alone would split the hell out of his conference. We’ve seen this movie before when he held a vote on H.R. 1 [the House Republican spending bill] and a vote on the Dem alternative — it backfired because the House bill got MORE votes than the Senate Dem bill. I can’t imagine very many of the Senate Dems could defend the President’s budget.”
It’s a fair point. And if vulnerable Dems fall into the trap of voting against both the Republican budget and a Democratic alternative, they’ll open themselves up to attacks like this one. At the same time, there’s nothing in the President’s budget that’s remotely as controversial as the GOP plan to phase out Medicare, while reducing the tax burden on wealthy Americans. And if you’re a vulnerable Republican who wants to avoid a primary, but also survive the general, you’re stuck.
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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