By David Wessel
One of the few facts in the budget wars in Washington to which both sides generally subscribe is that future deficits are being driven by spending on federal benefits, particularly health, not on the roughly one-third of domestic and defense spending that?s subject to annual appropriation by Congress.
Now Congress and the president are heading to a showdown over spending ? over that already-shrinking third, which covers everything from bullets for the Army to bureaucrats in the Agriculture Department.
Across-the-board spending cuts, the ?sequester,? were designed to force Congress and the president to find some better way to reduce the deficit, but they haven?t. Federal employees are taking mandatory furloughs, programs for the poor are being squeezed and the Pentagon is cutting flying hours for military planes. But much of the public hasn?t felt much pain ? yet. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found 58% said the sequester hadn?t touched them much, if at all; 22% said it had affected them ?a great deal? or ?quite a bit.?
But the sequester bites again in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 ? unless it?s repealed. The House assumes it will stick. The Senate assumes it won?t. And there?s no movement towards a conference committee to split the difference. So the House appropriation subcommittee is dividing up a $967 billion pot; the Senate, a $1.058 trillion pot. Democrats who want to repeal the sequester have a new talking point: The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that waiving the cuts would mean 900,000 more jobs by September 2014.
But the gap between President Barack Obama and Republicans, particularly in the House, is very wide. The president is going around the country making the case for more spending: ?At a time when we need to make investments to create jobs, and strengthen the middle class, and grow our economy?I?ve got some of the House Republicans who put forward a budget that does just the opposite. They?re pushing bills that would cut education, cut science, cut research, prevent us from meeting these priorities,? he said Thursday in Jacksonville, Fla.
To which House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) replied: ?It should be clear that government borrowing and spending isn?t how you build a durable economic recovery.?
Some Republican rank-and-file are itching for a confrontation over spending even if that means a government shutdown. Others fear a shutdown would hurt Republicans in the 2014 elections. Lately, there has been talk in the House of avoiding an Oct. 1 government shutdown with a stop-gap bill, a ?continuing resolution? to fund the government at a $988 billion level, but dividing that sum among defense and various domestic programs will be contentious.
And even if Congress manages to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1, it?ll soon be confronted ? again ? with the need to raise the federal debt ceiling. The latest estimate by the Bipartisan Policy Center says the Treasury will run out of cash sometime between mid-October and mid-November.
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??See a (2012)?Wall Street Journal video primer on the budget
? WSJ?s Janet Hook looks at the odds this fall of a government shutdown or a showdown on debt payments, as Democratic and Republican lawmakers remain far apart on spending and taxes ? and face another debt-ceiling deadline as well. Join the discussion on Seib & Wessel?s Roundtable:
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For?critical perspectives on politics and the economy from Jerry Seib & David Wessel, visit?Seib & Wessel?and follow them on Twitter?@GeraldFSeib?and?@davidmwessel.
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Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/07/26/obama-house-gop-gear-up-for-fall-budget-battle/?mod=WSJBlog
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