In the end, negotiators settled on a trigger that would force automatic across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion to agency budgets over the next decade, split half and half between domestic programs and defense. Programs for the poor, including Medicaid and Social Security, would be exempted. But Medicare payments to providers could be hit.
Liberal doubts
Highlights of the deal.
Liberals were not enthusiastic about the package, arguing that it represents surrender on all their top priorities, including pledges to protect Medicare and to end tax breaks for the rich.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) withheld comment, saying she would confer with House Democrats on Monday. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who heads the 74-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, was blunt about his opposition.
“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” he said.
But a bigger stumbling block may be Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on defense. The two chairmen of those panels, Reps. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) and C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), held a joint news conference Saturday, vowing to oppose any long-term reduction in defense spending that exceeds $439 billion over the next 10 years. Anything larger “stops with this committee,” McKeon said.
Veterans such as McKeon and Young are the base of Boehner’s support within the House Republican conference, and Boehner is likely to need to win their votes to pass the debt-limit deal, even if Pelosi provides a significant bloc of Democrats.
On Sunday’s House conference call, some lawmakers expressed concern about the proposed Pentagon cuts. But most expressed support for the deal, and aides were cautiously optimistic that the proposal would pass with Democratic support.
Freshman Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), a car dealer and former football player given to sports metaphors, told Boehner he was ready to vote with the team.
“Grab a Gatorade and smoke a cigarette. You’ve earned it,” Kelly said.
Boehner, an inveterate smoker with a taste for red wine, responded: “How about a merlot and a cigarette?”
Staff writers Walter Pincus, Felicia Sonmez and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
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