House OKs $3.1 trillion spending plan; fate of approps bills remains uncertain

House Democrats squeaked through a $3.1 trillion spending map that outlines the party’s spending priorities through the next five years and the next president’s term.

Most Democrats applauded the measure, but Republicans derided it as a guaranteed recipe for historic tax increases.

{mosads}The 214-210 vote Thursday on the 2009 budget compromise, Congress’s first election-year budget in eight years, also showed that the Democrats’ expanding majority in the House is still volatile.

Although Democrats held together a majority of the Blue Dog coalition — winning the votes of 38 of the 47 fiscally conservative lawmakers — they lost the votes of the three newest members of their caucus.

Reps. Don Cazayoux (D-La.), Travis Childers (D-Miss.) and Bill Foster (D-Ill.) — all elected from Republican districts in special elections this year — voted against the conference report on the budget.

The three newest House members joined 11 other Democrats — including nine Blue Dogs — in voting against the majority. Not a single Republican voted for the budget resolution.

As their Senate counterparts did a day earlier, House Republicans spent the day railing against the Democrats’ budget.

“The budget produced by the Democratic majority kicks the American families while they’re down,” Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.) said during a Thursday morning press conference.

Republicans seized on the fact that the budget blueprint lets several of President Bush’s tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of 2010 to accuse Democrats of enacting what the GOP said would be the largest tax increase in American history.

Democrats defended their budget as doing just the opposite.

“Despite what the Republicans say, there are no new taxes in this budget but, instead, tax cuts for the middle class,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly news conference.

Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) said the budget agreement — which on Wednesday passed the Senate by a narrow 48-45 margin — contains an extension of marriage penalty relief, the child tax credit and the 10 percent tax bracket.

With the budget debate over, questions immediately turned to whether Congress will pass annual spending bills before it adjourns and set up an almost-certain showdown with the Bush White House during its final year.

Pelosi on Thursday refused to answer questions about the future of spending bills.

But Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said later in the day that he “anticipate[s] that appropriations bills will be on the floor this summer.”

That was echoed by at least one senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

“Passed by the House, yes,” was Rep. José Serrano’s (D-N.Y.) prediction for the majority of the 13 spending bills. “Enacted into law, that’s a different matter entirely.

“But I believe we are on target to get all the appropriations bills passed by the House,” Serrano said.

Hoyer on Wednesday, though, also signaled that a continuing resolution to keep the government running into the next president’s first term was an option that Democrats are exploring.

“We had, you know, obviously a confrontation [last year] with the administration,” Hoyer told reporters on Wednesday. “Nobody believes that is a very useful, worthwhile effort. And if that is where we’re going to be, I think the Senate is going to say we’re not going to go through that. We will do something to fund the government until we have an opportunity to work together.”