Conservatives Hand Biden a Budget Win

Senate Republicans have saved President Biden from a budget fight with the new House majority. On Thursday, Senator McConnell and nearly two dozen other Republicans voted to approve a $1.7 trillion budget over the objections of conservatives in Congress. Fiscal watchdog groups fiercely oppose the bill. The president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas, said in a statement that the budget will make it harder for the Federal Reserve to fight elevated inflation. The combination of tax breaks and spending increases, Ms. MacGuineas writes, will “pour far too much fuel on the inflation fire.”Senator Paul, a budget hawk, blamed his own party’s leadership for what he calls irresponsible spending. Mr. Paul took to the Senate floor just before 70 of his colleagues voted for the bill.“You would think that two years of nearly 40-year-high inflation would create some hesitation,” Mr. Paul said, adding that Mr. McConnell has put his colleagues “behind the barrel of a gun, forcing us to choose between letting the government expire or blindly passing a $1.7 trillion spending package.”Immigration was another flashpoint for conservatives during the debate. Title 42, a Trump-era immigration policy allowing the government to expel asylum seekers at the southern border, was set to expire on Wednesday evening before the Supreme Court intervened and preserved it, for now. Senators attempted to include a more permanent fix in the final budget. Senator Lee of Utah introduced an amendment that would have defunded the office of the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, until the administration reinstated Title 42. Senators Sinema and Tester attempted to find a compromise to increase border security funding and extend that policy for a period of time, but the amendment failed. The House GOP leader, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, is one of the most strident voices on this budget deal. With his speakership not yet guaranteed, he will lose leverage once this budget is adopted. “We’re two weeks away from having a stronger hand in negotiations,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We can eliminate waste and wokeism, we would have a stronger hand,” he added. Congressman Chip Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus, lamented that his “friends” and “former boss” — Senator Cornyn — voted to “spend billions we do not have” and to block Republicans “from securing the border for at least nine months.” The bill, which clocks in at more than 4,000 pages in length, was released at 1:30 on Wednesday morning. It was written by the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee. A point of contention is the proliferation of earmarks, or allocations added to the bill by individual members for projects in their districts or states. Earmarks have long been a bane to conservatives, who argue that they are just sweeteners added to unpalatable legislation. Senator Scott said his party “can’t keep doing this.” There are more than 7,500 earmarks in the final bill. Senator Cramer, who does not support the spending bill, fired back at House Republicans for threatening to hold up his colleagues’ legislation in the 118th Congress. “Statements like that coming from House Republicans is the very reason that some Senate Republicans feel they probably should spare them from the burden of having to govern,” he said. House conservatives accuse their Senate colleagues of taking the easy way out and betraying the conservative cause. Writing a bill in secret, they say, is an operating procedure that can no longer be tolerated. The omnibus spending bill includes language that bars the federal government from spending money on improving technologies for Border Patrol. In response, Mr. Roy said in a tweet that Mr. McConnell has “declared war on Texas.” The House could take up the bill in short order. With Democrats still in the majority, it appears likely the omnibus bill will be signed by President Biden before the Friday night deadline.

Conservatives Hand Biden a Budget Win

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