Republicans in the House and Senate hoped to reach an agreement on the budget this week, but that possibility looks dimmer as Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., is objecting to the agreement for reasons he is keeping to himself.
“I have some legitimate concerns about some policy issues in the budget,” Corker said Tuesday evening.
Corker was speaking in the Capitol following a vote related to legislation on Congress’ role in the Iran deal. Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sponsored that legislation, and there has been speculation that he is holding up movement on the budget to spur Republicans to pass the Iran bill without adding amendments that would draw a veto from President Obama.
“I can’t speak to rumors,” Corker said of that possibility, declining to answer it directly.
Instead, he suggested that his opposition to the budget deal is because it could include a budgeting measure that some consider a gimmick. Known as “Changes in Mandatory Programs” or “CHIMPS,” the accounting procedure pushes mandatory spending into future years to lower spending in a given year.
“I’m a fiscal conservative, I think everyone understands that, always have been,” Corker said. “I do not like gimmicks.”
He claimed that the use of CHIMPS could hide up to $190 billion in spending over 10 years.
The Senate version of the GOP budget eliminated the use of the move, but the House version did not. Appropriators have objected to phasing out the tools, saying that it would force them to make unrealistic cuts to spending already constrained by spending caps.
Use of the budgeting procedure is just one of several differences that Corker and the other Senate and House members on the budget conference committee have been trying to hammer out. They missed the original deadline to pass a conference report last Wednesday.
All other members of the conference beside Corker have signed onto a deal.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., another member of the conference, declined to guess when the impasse might be broken and the conference might finish its work. Nevertheless, he struck an optimistic note Tuesday evening. “It’s all going to be OK,” he said.
