Budget-Cutting Bill A Key Test for Blunt
Loss Could Imperil Leadership Bid

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 1, 2006

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) faces a final major test today in his bid to succeed Rep. Tom DeLay as majority leader when the House votes on final passage of a major budget-cutting measure championed by the White House and GOP leaders.

Supporters and opponents of Blunt say passage of the budget bill may not ensure his victory in the leadership vote on Thursday, but its failure could be a serious blow to his bid to succeed DeLay (R-Tex.), who is under indictment in his home state. As Republican whip, Blunt is supposed to win votes, and he took considerable heat last year for the GOP's difficulties passing high-profile legislation.

The budget vote will be close, according to lawmakers and aides. An almost identical measure -- saving $39.7 billion over five years by paring back Medicaid rolls, cutting student loans and trimming other entitlement programs -- passed the House at the crack of dawn Dec. 19, by a vote of 212 to 206.

But small changes in the Senate forced the bill back to the House. New information -- and an aggressive lobbying campaign by teachers groups, the senior citizens lobby AARP, pharmacists, radiologists and others affected by the cuts -- have taken a toll in recent weeks. On Friday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office informed lawmakers that $28 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade would impose new costs on 13 million poor and working poor recipients. By 2015, new fees would end insurance coverage for 65,000 Medicaid enrollees, 60 percent of them children, CBO analysts said.

At least one of December's yes votes, Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), has announced he will vote no today, after getting an earful from constituents and activists. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.), who did not vote in December, will also vote no. Several other Republicans say they are undecided.

"Representation is only effective if the elected official listens to the people," Simmons said. "In a democracy, the government must serve the people, not reign over them. I have listened and concluded that the budget, as it stands, falls short."

The House will also vote today on the Republican leadership's proposal to ban former House members who become lobbyists from the House floor and House gym, venues that have made retired lawmakers valuable commodities for lobbying firms. The lobbyist spouses of current and former lawmakers would also be banned. Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said last month the measure would be the first step in a much broader effort to change rules on congressional lobbying over the coming weeks.

House Republicans will meet this morning to quiz Blunt and his two opponents, Reps. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), in what will be the first conference-wide meeting since DeLay relinquished his claim to the majority leader's post.

At that meeting, Reps. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.) and John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) will move to force all of the Republican leadership posts other than Hastert's to be opened to challenge. That way, all GOP leaders will have to face the questions of a rank and file increasingly worried about the growing corruption scandal that has forced one member to plead guilty to bribery charges and another to relinquish his committee chairmanship. If the resolution can garner a majority of the Republican members, Thursday's election could lead to considerably more turmoil -- and a fresh slate of new GOP leaders.

"We have extraordinary circumstances facing us," Lungren said. "We have a scandal that many of us didn't want to admit existed and that others wanted to sweep under the rug. It has created a cloud over the Congress."

Already, four candidates -- Reps. Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.), Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) -- have declared they want to run for majority whip, a post that would open only if Blunt wins the majority leader's race or if the Lungren-Sweeney resolution succeeds. In recent days, Reps. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have said they would challenge Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) for the post of Republican Conference chairman.

Those declarations have increased pressure on the leadership to open up the election.

"I still feel that by the end of the week, change trumps the status quo," Wamp said. "We're going to get some new leaders."

With House members returning to Washington this week, the leadership election has already turned testy. House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) publicly accused Blunt supporters of threatening to intervene on behalf of House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) over a jurisdiction fight regarding telecommunications law. Blunt tried to win the Texas Republicans to his camp en masse, a bid that came up short but did secure the votes of several Texans hoping to preserve the clout of a delegation that, for the first time in more than a decade, will lose a seat in the leadership.

Boehner also accused Blunt of making promises to win votes, an accusation Blunt flatly denied.