You Go First. No, You Go First! Inside The ‘Budget’ Standoff In Washington

With Congress already on spring break, the White House is making sure everyone knows that House Republicans have yet to pass a budget resolution, and won’t until April 15th.

The day before he left, President Joe Biden said in the letter for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “I hope House Republicans can present the American public with your budget plan before Congress leaves for the Easter recess so we can have an in-depth conversation when you return.”

McCarthy, instead of passing the resolution, has demanded that the White House come to the budget negotiating table. When McCarthy asked again there, the White House spokesman issued a statement highlighting the report House Republicans missed the deadline, which in 1974 law laying out the federal budget process but there is no penalty for delays.

“President Biden remains eager to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy on the budget. But a few weeks after the President released the budget for cutting the deficit, House Republicans left Washington for a two-week break without submitting their own,” said the spokesperson.

In one critic, the White House took advantage of the ambiguity about the word “budget” in Washington. What the White House is asking House Republicans to do is provide something less detailed and useful for negotiations than what the White House is doing — and more politically difficult.

The White House budget is a big affair and many volumes are very detailed that have proposed language for lawmakers to use when writing the funding bill. A budget resolution contains barebones table, less language privacy and usually non-binding in nature.

This is to the White House’s advantage, according to Doug Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank.

“Budgets consider more than budget resolutions and should not be comparable,” he said. In his view, the White House persuaded McCarthy to produce political issues that were not useful for negotiations.

“It was deliberately rude,” he said. “[The White House] could easily sit down with a budget, which is a proposal that does not have the force of law, and a list of whatever the Republicans have, and they would be in the same position.

But one major problem is that the Republicans do not have such a list – so it is difficult to sit down. And, as White House officials quickly pointed out, it was McCarthy himself who promised to pass the budget resolution.

“It’s not complicated: Speaker McCarthy – who says that spending the budget is his ‘first responsibility’ – must determine what programs hardworking families rely on, so that they can give tax gifts to the wealthy and special interests. White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa told HuffPost.

“Are they going to cut health care, education, border security, manufacturing, defense spending, Medicare or support for families with children? We cannot negotiate a one-sided budget – the President sets his priorities, the Speaker must do the same.

Further complicating matters is that this is no ordinary budget negotiation – the inherent threat of a debt ceiling breach hangs in the background.

On the one hand, Republicans have said they won’t raise the debt ceiling this summer or early fall without unspecified spending cuts. The White House has said raising the debt ceiling is non-negotiable, but a separate discussion could be held about the budget. But those discussions can only take place, even if Republicans propose a fiscal plan.

And where is the rub. That attitude has led to a rhetorical “no, you go first” standoff, with the GOP complaining the White House won’t negotiate and the White House asking Republicans to say what their plans are before negotiations. Meanwhile, the ability of the Ministry of Finance to stave off standards with accounting movements dwindles by the day.

So far, the White House has held the upper hand in the public debate, as Republicans have dropped certain budget requests, much less offered or passed budget resolutions. Brian Deese, then director of the White House National Economic Council, said on February 6 that the logical counter offer to the White House budget would be a budget resolution.

“We continue to hope and hope that the Republican House of Representatives will create a budget plan, will bring a budget resolution. This is how the process is most effective,” he said.

So far, House Republicans have been closest to defining what they want McCarthy’s letter was sent to the White Housesaid the GOP wishes to cut annual spending to “pre-inflation” levels, strengthen work requirements for some federal benefits, claw back unspent COVID money and implement unspecified proposals on border security and energy production.

Difficulties House GOP in coalescing even around the budget resolution were highlighted by reports in The New York Times of infighting between McCarthy and some of his deputies over the debt limit strategy.

Administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the White House budget and budget resolution differ in detail. Still, the official said, it would be an improvement over what the House GOP has rolled out so far. And, officials say, it’s a low bar.

“I don’t think anyone expected a 1,600-page budget with legislative language and details on every account,” the official said. “It’s not unreasonable for us to say, ‘We’ve told you what we’re for. What are you for?’ And it can’t be just four bullets in a one and a half page letter. It has to have some meat.

Whatever the Republican leader puts forward, he also has to show that he can pass, the official said, “to show that he has 218 votes for whatever he’s charged with or whatever his position is.”

Experts with the liberal Center for American Progress said the White House had a point that the budget resolution would provide some details, such as annual spending targets or cumulative totals over the 10-year budget window, that the GOP has not disclosed.

“It’s very popular to say, in general, we have to cut spending, and then it’s not popular when you try to figure out what to cut. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy for the Center and veterans Biden’s Office of Management and Budget.

However, Kogan said anyone expecting a budget resolution to be put together quickly will be disappointed. It often takes weeks to garner support from various factions of the party before voting, a daunting prospect for the GOP majority with only four votes to spare and the speaker appearing to be on the right wing of the conference.

“The speaker probably doesn’t want to make a budget resolution because he knows the details behind the proposal will be unpopular to get support,” Kogan said.

“Right now, it’s like a black box. We don’t know how much progress has been made. We don’t know what the difficulties are. We don’t know where it’s being held. So, we don’t know how close it is.