The GOP’s Real Budget Hatchet Man

No, it’s not Paul Ryan.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjbrenchley/4341134655/">cjbrenchley</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In the escalating fight over the budget and deficit in Washington, all eyes have been trained on GOP golden boy Rep. Paul Ryan. But though the Wisconsin Republican’s controversial plan to gut Medicare has dominated the headlines, another House GOPer has been quietly doing the dirty work of making the budget cuts that actually have some chance of passing.

Two weeks ago, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, made the GOP’s next big move to slash spending for social programs. In a little-noticed proposal, Rogers detailed how the GOP wants to inflict the pain of more than $1 trillion in unspecified discretionary spending cuts contained in Ryan’s 2012 budget, which passed the House in April. Rogers has now divided up the cuts into 12 different areas, each of which will be considered as its own spending bill. Under his proposal, the poor and the working class will be hardest-hit.

On Tuesday, Rogers kicked off the GOP’s budget-cutting party in the House, deciding which programs should pay the price. Rogers has focused on capping labor, health, and education spending at $139 billion—$18 billion less than the 2011 budget and $41 billion below what President Obama proposed in his own 2012 budget. Big cuts to transportation and housing are another top priority for the GOP—which, per Rogers’ proposal, wants to slash spending by $7.7 billion from the 2011 budget and $27 billion from the president’s budget. By contrast, there’s only one area where Republicans want to increase outlays: defense spending, where they propose a $17 billion hike in 2012.

Ironically enough, Rogers himself was once an infamous big spender. Dubbed the “Prince of Pork” by his Democratic opponents, the veteran Republican has secured so many earmarks for his home district that his hometown is known as “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” But, along with the rest of the Republican leadership, Rogers has swiftly reinvented himself as a scalpel-wielding conservative in the face of the tea party-fueled pressure to reduce spending. His plan will now form the roadmap for where the Republicans stand on the big budget negotiations this summer—and his cuts are significantly likelier to be implemented than other aspects of the Ryan plan.

Despite the controversy surrounding Ryan’s proposal to voucherize Medicare, it’s a nonstarter on Capitol Hill. It doesn’t have a chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, and Republicans have slowly backed away from the plan. Also sacrosanct is Social Security, which Senate Democrats have vowed not to touch. Meanwhile, Republicans have refused to make tax increases a part of any deal. “No Medicare, no Social Security, no defense, no tax [increases]—there’s not going to be a deal of any magnitude,” notes Stan Collender, a former top Democratic congressional budget aide.

Leaving aside these budget-busting items, much of what’s left are cuts to discretionary spending and mandatory spending programs for low-income families, including food stamps and welfare—programs that have far less political currency and fewer advocates to defend them.

Democrats and progressive advocates have already taken Rogers’ early moves as a clear signal that Republicans intend to pare back money for Pell Grants—federal funds given to needy college students—and low-income families. “Pell Grants—that’s a big piece of the cut right there,” says George Behan, chief of staff for Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the ranking Democratic member on the House Appropriations Committee. “We’re going to have trouble with [that] and other priority items for the Democratic caucus.” Behan also pointed to large proposed cuts to spending on the interior and environment—$2 billion less than the 2011 budget—which he predicted would affect the Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service, and wildlife refuges.

Rogers’ appropriations bills are unlikely to make their way through the Democratic Senate resembling the form in which they pass through the lower chamber. But they’ll help move the goalposts in a spending debate that’s been mired in political gridlock. “The House has basically staked out its position, at least for 2012—they’re moving ahead,” says James Horney, vice president for federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Lawmakers don’t necessarily need to pass a budget this year—they failed to do so in 2010, which resulted in a painful, protracted series of temporary budget extensions. And compared with big changes to entitlement programs or taxes, reductions to discretionary spending barely put a dent in the long-term budget and deficit picture. But Congress will be forced to come to some kind of agreement on the debt ceiling this summer. In the coming weeks of wheeling and dealing, social programs could end up falling victim as Democrats are forced to make concessions to avert an economic disaster if no compromise is reached.

To be sure, the House Democrats could have some influence over how spending cuts are divvied up. The right flank of the House GOP revolted against Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) last month, voting against the budget to fund the government for the remainder of 2011, because it didn’t go far enough, in their view. As a result, Boehner was forced to rely on Democratic votes to get the budget passed and avoid a shutdown, and the most draconian cuts were avoided. This time around, Democrats will again fight cuts “we can’t live with,” Behan asserts, perhaps staving off the most extreme spending reductions to the vulnerable. That fight begins this week as the spending bills are hammered out, one by one, and legislators hash out which programs will be targeted.

Just the same, Boehner’s failure to deliver on his promises to cut spending by tens of billions of dollars earlier this year may embolden more Republicans to insist that real budget blood be drawn this time around. And Rogers will be the one wielding the ax, as he shepherds the GOP spending bills through the House in the upcoming weeks.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate