The budget deal that Republican and Democratic leaders reached this week makes the biggest changes to Social Security in decades, giving Republicans a small victory as they try to sell the agreement to skeptical advocacy groups in Washington and voters back home.
Republicans already are paying the price among key conservatives after agreeing to break the budget sequester for 2016 and 2017 and giving the president a debt holiday, allowing the administration to borrow without limit until March 2017.
But Republican leaders say the chance to make the first changes to Social Security’s disability program, where fraud has become rampant, is worth the trade, particularly when the alternative is either a default or a “clean” debt increase without any conditions attached, as President Obama has sought.
“It’s a solid agreement, and I told my colleagues there isn’t any reason why any member should vote against this,” House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said after making a plea — likely his last as speaker — for support for another controversial measure.
The deal is the equivalent of digging through the sofa cushions to scrounge nickels and dimes in order to cover the cost of raising discretionary spending by $50 billion in fiscal year 2016 and $30 billion in 2017.
It changes federal law to allow debt collectors to call Americans’ cellphones — but only if the debt is owed to Uncle Sam. It would sell off part of the government’s strategic oil reserves to raise some $5 billion over the next decade and speeds up increases in the civil penalties the government can charge, raising some $2.2 billion.
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Like the big budget deals Mr. Boehner led in 2011 and 2013, this one front-loads the spending, adding more than $67 billion in outlays over the next two years while pushing the new revenue and spending cuts to the end of the decade. In fact, $31 billion of the cuts and savings don’t materialize until 2024.
Although billed as a bipartisan compromise, Democrats seemed far happier with the outcome than Republicans.
“We successfully secured equal increases in funding defense and non-defense priorities. We have extended the solvency of Social Security Disability Insurance and protected millions of seniors from a significant increase in their Medicare Part B premiums and deductibles next year. Most importantly, we have affirmed that the full faith and credit of the United States is non-negotiable and inviolable with the inclusion of a clean debt limit suspension in this package,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said in a statement ticking off her party’s victories.
The best Republican leaders could muster was telling their troops that the alternative would have been worse.
“The agreement isn’t perfect by any means, but the alternative was a clean debt ceiling increase without any additional support for our troops and without any entitlement reforms. So this is a good deal for our troops and for the American people,” Mr. Boehner said.
Republicans were caught from the beginning between competing forces. Some wanted to stick to the 2011 budget deal that imposed deep cuts in defense and domestic spending for a decade, but defense hawks insisted that the Pentagon needed more money to fight terrorism overseas.
SEE ALSO: Obama says he’s ‘pretty happy’ with two-year budget deal
Democrats, meanwhile, were unified, saying they would accept an increase in defense spending only if it was matched dollar for dollar with domestic spending.
Republicans initially tried to use a gimmick to boost defense alone but ran into a veto threat from Mr. Obama and filibusters from Senate Democrats, forcing them to the negotiating table, where they agreed to the spending hikes as long as most of them were offset with cuts or fees elsewhere.
The debt increase, meanwhile, is attached to the bill — but so are the changes to Social Security, which Republicans are touting as their big-ticket takeaway, saying it’s the first step on the path to bigger reforms of runaway entitlements.
Under the deal, Social Security disability applicants would be asked to show a doctor’s evaluation that they are indeed disabled. Some on Capitol Hill were stunned to learn that wasn’t a requirement already.
The deal also boosts disability fraud investigations, imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for fraud and gives the Social Security Administration new tools to verify someone’s earnings.
“I don’t think anyone thinks this is a reinvention of the DI program. It’s best thought of as a two-year financial patch,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative-leaning policy think tank.
He said the overall budget deal includes the “right pieces” — an increase in discretionary spending offset by cuts to mandatory programs.
“Given the political environment, it’s probably the best that can get through. I think you take this half a loaf and move on,” he said.
The House will vote on the package Wednesday, leaving lawmakers with little time to digest the 144-page blueprint.
“This essentially gives the president an open path all the way to the next president of the United States,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican. “If I were President Obama, I would be giddy with glee.”
Still, Mr. Obama did agree to a change in Obamacare as part of the deal, which scraps a provision that automatically enrolls full-time employees into company health care plans if they do not affirmatively select a plan or opt out of coverage.
The rule, which affects companies with 200 workers or more, hasn’t taken effect, but Republican lawmakers said it was already sowing confusion.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce had moved to cut the rule as part of a Republican-authored reconciliation package that would repeal Obamacare’s unpopular mandates and taxes while defunding Planned Parenthood.
Neil Trautwein, vice president health care policy at the National Retail Federation, said Tuesday that the automatic enrollment rule “ignores the fact that many workers are already covered through a spouse or parent or otherwise, and would unnecessarily duplicate coverage and costs.”
“That’s not a productive use of our nation’s health care resources, and would create one more unneeded administrative burden for businesses,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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