–House Speaker Doesn’t Even Mention GOP’s Signature Issue In Briefing
–House Set To Vote On Balanced Budget Amendment Friday
–House Approves $128B Spending Package With Stop-Gap Until Dec 16

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – Quite often what a congressional leader doesn’t
discuss at a briefing is as important as what he or she actually says.

So it seemed striking that House Speaker John Boehner during his
weekly briefing Thursday didn’t even mention the House’s coming vote
Friday on a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

The balanced budget constitutional amendment has been one of the
GOP’s signature fiscal issues for a generation.

At his briefing, the Speaker discussed a raft of jobs measures that
House Republicans are pushing but appeared to deflate when asked about
the fate of Congress’ deficit reduction panel,

Boehner ripped into Democrats for failing to offer any concrete
proposals during the deficit panel talks.

“There has been exactly one proposal on the table in the joint
committee,” Boehner said, referring to the GOP’s plan. That offer would
cut spending by $750 billion, generate about $300 billion in revenue and
achieve about $200 billion in interest savings.

“There has never been a Democratic position,” Boehner said.

Boehner said he has been urging the deficit panel to accomplish its
goals for about two months, but indicated that things are not going
well.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” he
said, adding that the deficit panel impasse is “very frustrating.”

Congress’ Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is charged to
submit a report to Congress by Nov. 23, 2011 that reduces the deficit by
between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion for the 2012 and 2021 period.

The final package, if one is agreed to by the majority of the
panel’s 12 members, must be voted on without amendment by the House and
Senate by Dec. 23, 2011.

If the panel fails to agree on a spending cut package or Congress
rejects its plan, a budget enforcement trigger would secure $1.2
trillion in budget savings through across-the-board cuts.

The cuts would be equally divided between defense and non-defense
programs but would exempt Social Security, Medicaid and low-income
programs.

Some Republicans have said the deficit panel’s stalemate shows the
need for a balanced budget amendment, but others have quietly despaired
that if a special panel can’t secure a relatively modest one time
deficit reduction package, achieving a balanced budget every year is
impractical.

Many budget experts have argued there is no compelling need for
achieving a precisely balanced budget every year. However, virtually all
fiscal experts agree that the U.S.’s current path of large deficits and
growing debt is fundamentally unsound.

After much intraparty debate among House Republicans, the House
will vote on Friday a version of a balanced budget amendment that
requires federal outlays to equal receipts. Waiving this requirement
would require a three-fifths vote of each chamber. It would also require
three-fifth votes by Congress to increase the debt ceiling.

For the balanced budget amendment to pass the House, it must secure
a two-third majority, or 290 votes. House Republican leaders, presumably
with an eye on that goal, opted not to go forward with a much more
stringent version of the amendment that would have mandated that
spending never exceed 18% of GDP.

But it is still unclear if the amendment will clear the House. Most
Democrats, even those who have supported balanced budget amendments in
previous years, have said they will vote against the amendment this
year.

The Senate is also expected to vote on a balanced budget amendment
this year.

Finally, the House approved Thursday a fiscal year 2012 spending
package that includes a stop-gap bill funding the government until Dec.
16.

The House vote was 298 to 121. The Senate will vote on it later
Thursday or Friday.

The package would allocate $128 billion and combines three of the
regular FY’12 spending bills: Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, and
Transportation-HUD.

The 2012 fiscal year began on Oct. 1. The federal government is
running on a stop-gap spending bill that extends until Friday. No final
version of a regular FY’12 appropriations bill has yet been passed.

The stop-gap spending bill that would fund the rest of the federal
government until Dec. 16 as work continues on the nine remaining
spending bills.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said this week that he hopes this
stop-gap funding bill is the last one needed this year.

The spending bill package includes some policy riders, including a
provision that would increase the limit on the size of mortgages insured
by the FHA from $625,000 to $729,750.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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