With a possible federal government shutdown just hours away on a tense afternoon last month, Sen. Mark R. Warner sounded frustrated.
“As a business guy and someone who’s done this as governor,” the Virginia Democrat told reporters on a conference call April 8, he could not understand why the White House and congressional Republicans had not agreed on a budget.
(Charles Dharapak/Associated Press) - Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is a co-leader of the bipartisan “Gang of Six” working on a budget strategy.
“I wish I was in the room,” he said.
Now, with a government shutdown averted and the prospect of a broader budget-cutting agreement on the horizon, he is in the room. At times, the room has been Warner’s own office — even the kitchen of his Alexandria home.
Along with Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Warner is the co-leader of a bipartisan band of senators — a rare blend of liberals, moderates and conservatives dubbed the Gang of Six — that has been working for several months to write legislation inspired by the recommendations of President Obama’s fiscal commission.
As early as this week, Warner’s group could unveil the most comprehensive deficit-cutting plan offered in the current debate — a combination of spending cuts and changes to the tax code and entitlement programs that could ignite controversy but also boost hopes for a budget deal.
“We are closing in on it,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Gang of Six, said last week. “There are still several items left to resolve, but I can see the finish line.”
Warner sounded a more cautious note.
“There are days I’m confident. There are days I’m not confident,” he said.
But Warner can take comfort from having been through this before — in Richmond.
As Virginia governor seven years ago, Warner persuaded a GOP-led legislature to adopt a budget that made record new investments in education, public safety and health care by imposing higher sales and cigarette taxes.
“Certainly, 2004 was a situation where the betting was against us and the conventional wisdom was against us, similar to the way this process has evolved,” Warner said.
This time, the final agreement will be skewed more toward budget cuts. Warner has suggested the breakdown would be $3 in spending reductions for every dollar in increased tax revenue, similar to the ratio proposed by the fiscal commission last year and by Obama in mid-April. The proposal — which includes reducing the national debt by $4 trillion — could alter some cherished tax deductions for mortgage interest and charitable donations while cutting spending for defense and in other previously sacrosanct areas.
The Virginia Republican Party has tried repeatedly to use the 2004 fight to brand Warner as a liberal tax-lover, a message they are sure to reassert if the Gang of Six compromise includes any proposal to raise taxes.
At the same time, the current negotiations have sparked worries among some Democratic leaders about what the group will propose, particularly when it comes to Medicare and Social Security.
“There’s a lot of anxiety out there, I think, on both sides, about what we might ultimately agree to,” Chambliss said. “At the end of the day, everybody’s going to have to swallow something, just like we’re asking the American people to do.”
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