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The
National Review
A
House GOP Win
They are prevailing in the budget
battle.
By Andrew Stiles
March
21, 2013
When
it comes to this year’s budget
debate, Republicans are united, and they are winning. At least for now.
On
Thursday, House Republicans plan
to pass a budget that reaches balance in ten years — decades sooner
than
previous efforts, and without additional tax increases — with
near-unanimous
GOP support. Shortly thereafter, they are likely to approve a
continuing
resolution that locks in federal spending at sequestration levels
through
September 30. President Obama will sign the continuing resolution,
despite his
objections and those of congressional Democrats. And Senate Democrats
are
poised to pass a budget for the first time in nearly four years, so the
budget
playing field has been leveled at last.
Not
bad for a supposedly ragtag
bunch — fresh off a demoralizing 2012 defeat, no less — that controls
only a
third of the federal government.
“When
Republicans are unified around
conservative principles, we have proven that we can move the White
House and
the Senate in our direction,” Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) said
Wednesday during a forum of conservative members on Capitol Hill. “Just
look at
what’s happened in the last three months.”
Even
Tim Huelskamp (R., Kan.), a
vocal critic of House leadership who was thrown off the budget
committee last
year after voting against Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) proposal,
concedes
that conservatives “are making progress” in moving the GOP conference
to the
right. He said he’d be a yes this time around.
Perhaps
most surprisingly, this
progress has all come more or less according to plan, part of a
long-term
strategy that was hatched months ago at the GOP conference retreat in
Williamsburg,
Va., where members agreed to postpone a fight over the debt ceiling
until after
a series of smaller battles — over sequestration, the continuing
resolution,
and the congressional budget — could be fought. As a result of that
agreement,
which was crafted by a coalition of leading conservatives, Senate
Democrats
were forced to pass a budget resolution, and House leadership presented
a
balanced budget.
Representative
Mick Mulvaney (R.,
S.C.) noted that although conservatives “took some heat” for agreeing
to delay
the debt-ceiling fight, the decision has paid off. “We did it to have
the exact
debate that we are having right now,” he said. “The Senate was forced
to pass a
budget, and now we’re having a discussion on a level playing field.”
Republicans
are confident the
American people will prefer their vision to the one offered by Senate
Democrats, which the Washington Post recently described as
“complacent.” When
the latter proposal was brought to the House floor for a vote on
Wednesday, 35
Democrats voted no. “Ours balances and doesn’t raise taxes. Theirs
raises taxes
and never balances,” Mulvaney said. “You could not have a better and
sharper
contrast.” Recent polling suggests voters may be inclined to agree.
Read
the rest of the article in The National
Review
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