Some of the elements of a budgetary “grand bargain” will be on the table today. Merging them is the biggest political challenge in the U.S. Capitol.
Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, will unveil her party’s fiscal 2014 budget, a plan generating almost $1 trillion in new revenue while protecting Medicare and expanding Medicaid health coverage for more low-income Americans, said a Democrat familiar with the proposal. It comes a day after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, offered his blueprint for balancing the government’s books in 10 years by cutting $4.6 trillion.
“If we pass our budget, and the Senate passes their budget, we have at least revived the budget process through which we can look for common ground,” Ryan said today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Lawmakers in both parties are waiting to see whether President Barack Obama, who begins two days of meetings with congressional Republicans today, will chart a compromise for those competing visions or side with the Democrats as he pushes for a grand-bargain budget settlement this year.
“That’s the big question that Washington is waiting to see,” said Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, an Arlington, Virginia-based group pushing for smaller deficits. “There is hope for some sort a deal in the coming months,” though “it might not be as grand a bargain as some of us would like.”
‘Bigger Role’
By waiting until next month to propose his own 2014 budget request, the president is able to “play a bigger role as a mediator” between the two sides of the congressional debate, Bixby said in an interview.
While the House and Senate work on a temporary spending plan to avert any government shutdown by March 27, the urgency for a larger agreement on spending and taxes is fueled by another expected reaching of the federal debt limit in May.
In a meeting yesterday with Senate Democrats, Obama was noncommittal when asked whether he would resist raising the eligibility ages for Medicare or Social Security, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin told reporters. “I didn’t hear a commitment” to preserve the Medicare eligibility age of 65, Harkin said.
Asked about accepting a change in the formula for calculating cost-of-living increases in entitlement benefits, the president told lawmakers that “things were open for negotiation,” Harkin said.