They may be relegated to the minority, but Senate Democrats are trying to preserve their power by forcing Republicans to change the timing and scope of what has become an annual fight over federal spending.
The top four Democratic Senate leaders are demanding Republicans sit down with them now and negotiate a plan to lift spending caps imposed under the 2011 Budget Control Act. If they don’t, Democrats will block individual spending legislation beginning with the 2016 Defense Appropriations bill.
Democrats filibustered the bill last week on a party-line vote of 50-45.
“It is not a vote against the Department of Defense, it’s not really a vote against this bill itself. It’s a vote against this appropriations process,” Democratic Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said. “We need to sit down and govern and do it in a bipartisan fashion.”
The move puts Republicans in a tough spot. With the control of both the House and Senate in their hands, they’ll possibly be blamed for stalled spending measures, even if Democrats are behind the delay.
Blocking the legislation also gives Senate Democrats more power to negotiate a favorable spending deal. If Republicans are allowed to send legislation to the president’s desk, a final spending agreement would likely be cut at the last minute between the GOP and President Obama, with less input from Democratic lawmakers sidelined in the minority.
The House has already passed half of the dozen spending bills needed to fund the federal government. Republicans had hoped to move at least a handful of spending bills to President Obama’s desk before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Such an accomplishment would have not only put political pressure on President Obama, it would have helped GOP lawmakers shed their reputation for governing from one fiscal cliff to another, peppered in between with threats of a federal government shutdown.
Republicans had planned to negotiate a deal with Obama to lift the spending caps some time in late summer or early fall, before the end of the fiscal year, according to GOP aides. But Democrats are now threatening to dash that plan.
“We are going to be relentless in urging our colleagues to meet us in the middle and negotiate,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the number-three Democrat. “We won’t get it all our way, they won’t get it all their way. But in a government with separation and balance of powers, that, my Republican friends, is how the world works.”
Senate Democrats say they are vying for an extension of a two-year deal signed in 2013 that lifted the budget caps until the end of this fiscal year. It was negotiated by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wa., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
“We are ready to work with Republicans to extend it and we hope they join us at the table,” Murray said.
Despite Democratic opposition, Republicans say they are going to try to move other spending bills. GOP members say Democrats are threatening to block vital funding and that Democrats have changed their mind on this at the last minute, as the defense spending bill passed in committee by a 27-3 bipartisan majority.
“It’s the road of bipartisanship and support for our troops that brought us this far,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “We shouldn’t let partisan politics trip us up now.”
