Republican U.S.
Representative Todd Rokita keeps a clock hanging on the wall of his
Capitol Hill office that tracks the U.S. government's rising debt in
real time and reminds him of his top priority: reining in federal
spending.“I was sent here
on a fiscal note,” said the Indiana lawmaker and vice chairman of the
House of Representatives Budget Committee, who rode a
Republican wave
during his first election to Congress in 2010.
When
President Donald Trump unveils his budget for the 2018 fiscal year on
Thursday, Rokita will be among many conservative Republicans cheering
proposed cuts to domestic programs that would pay for a military
buildup.
More moderate Republicans
are less enthusiastic and worry Trump's budget could force lawmakers to
choose between opposing the president or backing reductions in popular
programs such as aid for disabled children and hot meals for the
elderly.
“What you would hope is
that the administration is aware of the difficulty of some of these
things," said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma.
The
release of Trump’s budget, which comes as the Republican president is
facing an intraparty revolt over proposed legislation to replace the
Obamacare healthcare law, could open another fight among Republicans who
control both houses of Congress. To keep the government running,
lawmakers will need to approve a spending plan later this year.
The
White House has released few details about Trump's budget, other than
making clear the president wants to boost military spending by $54
billion and is seeking equivalent cuts in non-defense discretionary
programs.
But several agencies,
including the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency,
have been asked to prepare scenarios for steep reductions, according to
officials familiar with the discussions.
While
supporting deficit-reduction efforts, Cole said a major research
university in his district could get hit by National Institutes of
Health cuts, as could sewage treatment facilities funded by the EPA.
Republican
Senator Rob Portman, whose home state of Ohio sits on the southern
shores of Lake Erie, expressed concern about media reports saying the
Trump budget had penciled in sharp cuts in a cleanup program for the
Great Lakes.
NOT AUSTERE ENOUGH
While Rokita, who was among a
group of Republican lawmakers who met with Trump last week, appeared
comfortable with what he had learned so far about Trump’s budget, some
Republican members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus said they
wanted to see even further budget cuts.
Representative
Mo Brooks of Alabama said the outcry from lawmakers over the expected
cuts underscored to him that the blueprint would be a “a very large step
in the right direction” of reining in the debt.
Brooks
added: “My fear is that the Trump budget will not be austere enough to
minimize America’s risk of suffering the kind of debilitating insolvency
and bankruptcy that is destroying the lives of Venezuelans right now.”
OPEC
member Venezuela is immersed in a deep economic crisis, with inflation
in triple digits, shortages of basic goods, and many people going
hungry.
Brooks and other members
of the Freedom Caucus are among the most vocal critics of the
legislation backed by the White House to repeal and replace the
Affordable Care Act, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s
signature healthcare plan, known as Obamacare.
To
try to woo the conservative lawmakers on Trump's legislative agenda,
budget director Mick Mulvaney, himself a former member of the House
Freedom Caucus, has invited them to a bowling and pizza night at the
White House on Tuesday night.
Another Freedom Caucus member, Representative
David Schweikert of Arizona, said Mulvaney was encouraging lawmakers to
submit maverick fiscal ideas to the White House.
Schweikert said he hoped to revive a proposal from a
few years ago, in the midst of a fight over raising the U.S. debt limit,
that would have allowed the government to take a series of alternative,
albeit controversial steps, such as paying some creditors ahead of
others.
'SLASH AND BURN'
One senior Republican aide,
who referred to Trump’s budget as a “slash and burn” proposal, said one
fear of some House lawmakers was that they would be pressured to back
big spending cuts only to have them rejected by the Senate, where
Republicans hold a slimmer majority. The risk for House members is that
their votes could prompt a backlash in the 2018 congressional elections.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said a budget that cuts State
Department funds by one-third is unlikely to pass in his chamber.
Other high-ranking Republicans are setting off alarms.
Senator
Lindsey Graham, following a White House lunch on Tuesday with Trump,
said: "What I told him is that when we get in a deadlock between the
House and the Senate, different factions of the party ... you're the guy
who needs to come down and close the deal."
Cole said Congress would ultimately have the final say on the budget.
“At
the end of the day, we’ll have a budget. We’ll pass the budget,” he
said. “Our budget is not necessarily the president’s budget.”
(The Reuters)
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