WASHINGTON — Moving to keep a promise to slash the federal budget, Republicans controlling the House went on record Tuesday as wanting to return most domestic agencies to the 2008 budget levels in place before President Barack Obama took office.
The 256-165 vote came on a symbolic measure but is an opening salvo in a battle over the budget that will pit the House GOP against Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The days are over of unlimited spending, of no prioritization,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee. “And the days of getting spending under control are just beginning. This is a first step in a long process.”
The vote came just before Obama issued his proposal in his State of the Union speech, calling for a five-year freeze for most domestic agencies at current levels. That’s more than $80 billion a year higher than the level of cuts Republicans want.
Obama also called for lawmakers to back a five-year plan from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to save $78 billion in defense spending, an idea that has many Republicans anxious.
The immediate issue is how to wrap up the overdue budget for the 2011 budget year that began in October.
The vote was on a nonbinding resolution promising cuts approaching 20 percent for agencies such as the Education and Commerce departments when Congress wraps up the current year’s budget. The White House warns that the cuts would mean furloughs of tens of thousands of federal workers.
The actual GOP cuts would be made in a follow-up spending bill slated to advance next month and are sure to encounter strong resistance from the Democratic-controlled Senate and from Obama.
Republicans said Tuesday’s measure is the first step in keeping a campaign promise to cut $100 billion from Obama’s budget for the current year. The actual savings would be less — about $84 billion — because Obama’s budget increases were never passed.
And because the budget year has been underway since Oct. 1, GOP leaders say they can’t deliver the cuts by Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year; instead, they say they will spread them over a full calendar year.
That is not sufficient for many House conservatives. Almost 100 of them wrote House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday, urging him to cut the full amount over the final seven months of fiscal 2011.
Boehner said Tuesday that conservatives would be allowed to offer amendments to cut spending further and that the House “will work its will.”
Not a single Republican opposed Tuesday’s measure; 17 Democrats, mostly moderates, voted for it.
