Senate GOP reaction to deal mostly positive

Farm-state Republicans are protesting cuts to a popular crop insurance program, but otherwise GOP senators are giving the green light to a year-end deal to raise the debt limit and boost discretionary spending levels.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) delivered a heated critique of the deal Monday evening in a private meeting of the Senate GOP conference when he learned $3 billion in offsets would come from re-opening the 2014 Farm Bill to cut crop insurance.

{mosads}“I think this is largely coming from the White House,” Roberts said. “Why would they want to open up the farm bill during this budget debate?

“I was a little elevated in there,” Roberts told reporters after the meeting. “That is the offset. Crop insurance.”

He cited four years of drought in his home state followed by torrential storms and flooding this summer.

Republicans from agricultural states argue they accepted $24 billion in mandatory spending cuts when lawmakers passed the Farm Bill in the last Congress.

“We already made reductions in the programs and then to go to crop insurance is problematic,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).

Several lawmakers emerging from the closed-door session said they wanted to review the details on paper before commenting. 

But other Republicans said they were by and large satisfied with the deal, which will boost defense spending by about $56 billion over two years.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the defense number is still $5 billion less than he wants for 2016, but he’ll take it.

“I’m not happy, but I’m largely satisfied,” he said. “I think it’s the best deal we can probably get. It’s bipartisan, and it prevents a government shutdown.”

Freshman Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she would wait to review the details but was largely encouraged by what she heard in the Monday evening briefing.

Senior lawmakers praised the deal as a return to bipartisan functionality, something largely absent in recent years as fights over the debt limit and government spending often dragged on until the last minute, causing a credit downgrade in 2011 and a government shutdown in 2013.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in recent years has lauded the 2011 Budget Control Act’s caps on spending as the first meaningful reduction in discretionary spending since the Korean War.

He wanted to avoid a budget summit this fall and instead pass individual appropriations bills at funding levels set by the GOP budget, but Democrats forced him to the table by filibustering the spending measures.

“They objected to the spending level in the budget, prevented us from going to any of the appropriation bills, thereby forcing a negotiation,” McConnell told reporters in late September.

Senior Republicans say they can live with the result.

“The way to work around here is the art of the doable, and I think what they’re talking about is doable and that’s important,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said, “I like the fact that we’re working toward a result.”

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) touted the deal for not including any tax increases and being “fully paid for with credible offsets and other significant entitlement reform.”

But Senate GOP sources cautioned the deal would have to first pass the House, an uncertain prospect given recent turmoil that has roiled leadership races across the Capitol.

“It has to go through the House first. We’ll see how the Freedom Caucus reacts,” McCain said in reference to a group of 36 House conservatives. 

The Senate Democratic conference did not meet Monday to review the deal. 

In the House, Centrist Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) appeared inclined to support the deal after leaving a GOP conference meeting Monday night.

“The outline that was presented seems like a path forward,” Dent said. 

“He said he’s going to try to ‘clean the barn,’ ” Dent said of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), referring to the outgoing Speaker’s goal of clearing the deck for his successor. “Well, this is a good start.”

Cristina Marcos contributed.