THE REPUBLICAN speaker of the House, John Boehner, maintained his aggressive stance on government spending, the issue that is dominating US politics, at a news conference here yesterday.
Mr Boehner said he did not know when the House would pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government for the rest of the year. The House had scheduled a vote for late yesterday, but the deadline was unlikely to be met after Representatives proposed 583 amendments in what the New York Times called a “frenzied slash-and-burn budget contest”.
If Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, cannot agree on a continuing resolution by March 4th, they must either authorise spending at current levels or precipitate a government shutdown.
Mr Boehner said yesterday that he would not consider a short-term continuing resolution. He has accused Democrats of wanting a shutdown which they could blame on Republicans.
Mr Boehner initially proposed cutting $32 billion from the rest of this year’s budget, but radical freshmen Representatives backed by the extreme right-wing Tea Party upped the ante to $61 billion. The Republican Study Committee, which includes two-thirds of Republican House members, wants to hack $81 billion from this year’s budget.
Such drastic measures would not pass the Senate, and President Barack Obama has said he would veto the House Bill if it passes. Mr Boehner says he doubts the two parties can reach agreement, and accuses Mr Obama of weakness.
“I’ve got real doubts whether we’ll ever be able to come to an agreement with a Democrat-controlled Senate over a budget,” Mr Boehner told Fox News. Mr Obama “wasn’t elected to just sit there in the Oval Office – he was elected to lead. And if he won’t lead, we will.”
Mr Boehner alluded to the absence of proposed cuts in entitlements – Medicaid, Medicare and social security – in the president’s 2012 budget proposal. But Mr Boehner’s critics point out that the assault on government programmes led by House Republicans this week does not address these highest cost items either.
Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, captured the after-you-my-dear-Alphonse strategy adopted by both parties in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday afternoon.
“The president’s not talking about it because he’s waiting for the Republicans to talk about it,” Mr Christie said. “And our new, bold Republicans that we just sent to the House of Representatives? They’re not talking about it because they’re waiting for him to talk about it.”
Mr Christie’s admission that “you’re going to have to raise the retirement age for social security” was broadcast across the country. “Whoa-ho! I just said it,” he added. “And I’m still standing here. I did not vapourise into the carpeting.”
Mr Boehner accuses Mr Obama of having added 200,000 jobs to the federal payroll, though other estimates put the number at less than a third of that figure.
“If some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it,” Mr Boehner said earlier in the week.
Democrats seized on Mr Boehner’s statement as evidence that Republicans don’t care about the unemployed. Mr Boehner toned down his remarks yesterday, saying: “Look. I don’t want anyone to lose their job, federal or not. But come on, we’re broke.”
The Tea Party and Democrats joined in an unorthodox alliance to cut $450 million in funding for a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the Bush and Obama administrations had opposed for five years on the grounds that it was wasteful. Mr Boehner supported the engine, which has created more than 1,000 jobs in his home state of Ohio.
Some proposed budget amendments could have serious consequences, such as cutting dues to the United Nations and financing for the health care reform law.
One unusual amendment, which passed by one vote, will axe $2 million used for rounding up wild mustangs on public land and holding them in pens.
Another would eliminate studies on how men use condoms and the utility of yoga in preventing hot flushes in menopausal women.