OPINION:
The nation’s divided Congress battled down to the wire this week over its budget for the rest of this fiscal year — hoping to avoid a government shutdown.
The $1.01 trillion spending bill must be passed before midnight Thursday, though at this writing few were placing any big bets on meeting that deadline. Still, Congress has dodged budget deadlines before and may do so again. If for no other reason than to drive a stake through the heart of a bitterly divided, unpopular legislature that can’t seem to agree on anything except going home for the holidays.
This was the last gasp of a lame-duck Congress before Republicans can welcome their strengthened majority in the House and take control of the Senate in January — and begin to chart an agenda to deal with America’s most pressing problems.
So, with some exceptions, both sides seemed willing to deal without triggering another legislative stalemate at a time when Americans are sick and tired of them.
As budgets come and go, this one was full of trade-offs between the two parties on both sides of the Capitol made up of 535 men and women who, if given the opportunity, would write 535 different budgets.
The House Republican budget would cut $60 million from the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling that the days of giving the EPA everything President Obama wants are over.
It will slice $346 million out of the Internal Revenue Service, which Mr. Obama had turned into a political arm of his 2012 campaign. It prohibits the agency from targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status based on their ideological views.
The Pentagon will get more than a half-trillion dollars in defense funds, including $128 billion to maintain an army of 1.3 million active-duty soldiers.
And $73.7 billion to combat global terrorism, including $3.4 billion to continue bombing Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
Republicans said all the budget cuts, big and small, were little more than a preliminary down payment on spending reductions they plan to make in the future.
A major Republican change in economic policy, which had the liberals screaming bloody murder, were new deregulations in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law’s restrictions on the banking industry.
Leftist Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the rule changes “the worst of government for the rich and powerful.” Former Rep. Barney Frank, who co-authored the act, called it “an absolute outrage.”
Republicans and top Wall Street leaders said the stricter derivative transaction rules enacted in the aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis have significantly reduced the financial community’s ability to soften investment risks, and that has weakened economic growth.
But reaction was surprisingly muted in the White House and even among some Democrats.
“I think the relaxation that is involved here is not as likely to generate abuse as is being suggested,” said. Rep. James P. Moran, Virginia Democrat, who voted for similar rules changes in 2013 that drew the support of 70 Democrats.
Josh Earnest, the president’s press secretary, said “it is certainly possible that the president could sign this piece of legislation” despite the removal of a key reform in the Dodd-Frank law.
In what was a clear signal from the White House that it wants a budget passed, even with the GOP’s Dodd-Frank changes, Mr. Earnest told reporters, “We certainly don’t want to see a government shutdown.”
A further sign the Republicans were flexing their political muscles well in advance of their takeover next year dealt with Mr. Obama’s disputed executive actions to allow children of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States.
Notably, their budget bill would fund the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces U.S. immigration laws, only until Feb. 27.
That is when House GOP leaders intend to press ahead with their own legislative response to Mr. Obama’s action that could include withholding funds to carry out his illegal plan.
In short, this budget is a shot across the bow, declaring that it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.
Republicans will be in charge of Congress for the next two years and beyond, and Mr. Obama had better get used to it for the remainder of his second term.
What this means in terms of the big economic and fiscal issues that have plagued his presidency remains to be seen.
The administration is still running annual budget deficits in the neighborhood of a half-trillion dollars, and that’s led to a national debt of more than $18 trillion.
Mr. Obama has been AWOL on this issue from the start. He didn’t seek the presidency to cut wasteful, uncontrolled and needless spending, but to build upon it by proposing one extravagant, spendthrift budget after another.
In the first two years, the Democrats were happy to go along with him. That slowed a little when Republicans won control of the House in 2010, but with Democrats still in charge of the Senate, spending was on automatic pilot.
Indeed, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who is on record saying “we don’t need a budget,” routinely sent the GOP’s House-passed bills into oblivion.
The purse strings of Congress will be in the hands of Republicans early next year, and they’ve got something to prove to the voters: that they can produce a budget for the next fiscal year that reins in the deficit while overhauling the tax code to give us the kind of pro-growth, pro-investment reforms that will yield higher revenue through lower tax rates.
Republicans will face one obvious legislative hurdle at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue: a president who for the past six years has presided over record budget deficits and has persistently called for higher, job-killing taxes.
We may have to wait until after the 2016 presidential election to deal with that one.
• Donald Lambro is a syndicated columnist and contributor to The Washington Times.
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