WASHINGTON — When House Republicans pass Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget for a fourth year in a row this week, they’ll go on record again in favor of big spending cuts across a wide swath of programs, including Medicaid, food and farm aid and eliminating subsidies for Amtrak and airline flights to small cities.
But a budget is only a non-binding framework. It can promise the sky, but to actually fulfill its pledges requires follow-up legislation. When the cuts turn real, lawmakers tend to lose their nerve, even some of the hardiest Tea Party conservatives. Virtually none of the bold promises of the Ryan budget have come to pass.
“Cutting spending is hard. Easy in theory, hard in practice,” Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, says of some recent votes. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Less than two months after Congress passed a budget deal Ryan negotiated with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., it reversed course in February and repealed a modest cut to inflation increases for military pensioners under age 62.
Lawmakers beat a hasty retreat in the face of an uproar from veterans groups.
One telling vote illustrates the difficulty of cutting spending. A juicy target for years has been the Essential Air Service program, which provides taxpayer subsidies to small airlines serving money-losing routes to rural airports. The cost of the subsidies often runs hundreds of dollars a ticket.
Ryan’s budget would phase them out. But last year when Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., offered an amendment to a spending bill to actually ax the program, one-third of House Republicans voted to preserve it.
“Through the appropriations process you’re shooting with real bullets,” bill sponsor Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, said. “And oftentimes, budgets are a blueprint that’s not real.”
To be sure, Democrats and President Barack Obama also have played a role in preventing many of the spending cuts. Last year, they watered down a House plan to cut food stamps and require more recipients to work or participate in job training. In 2011, Obama played a strong hand in forcing Republicans to accept smaller cuts in a government-wide spending bill.
“They can talk the talk, but they’re not willing to walk the walk,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group.
