House OKs budget on Obama’s 100th day

House Democrats voted to give final approval to a $3.5 trillion budget that addresses the Democrats’ top domestic priorities without the help of any Republicans.

The budget resolution passed in the House by a vote of 233-193. The budget won the exact same number of votes when it first came up for a vote earlier this month. House Republicans voted en masse against the budget, just like they did on the earlier budget vote and on the Democrats’ other major legislative items this year.

{mosads}The budget is expected to win final approval in the Senate later on Wednesday.

House Democrats touted the approved budget as yet another victory for them and President Obama in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the budget “focuses on those three pillars of the Obama agenda” — education, healthcare and energy.

The budget calls for an increase in Pell Grants for lower-income college students and reserve funds to come up with reforms increasing healthcare coverage and reducing carbon emissions and the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republicans blasted the budget as a turn toward a bigger-government philosophy prevalent in Europe.

“It spends an awful lot of money, it raises a lot of taxes, and it puts all of this debt on the backs our kids and grandkids,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). “This is not the American way.”

The Democrats, by passing the $3.5 trillion budget on top of the
$787 billion stimulus package and the $410 billion package of 2009 spending bills, are moving toward a “big government, a socialist government,” Boehner said.

But Pelosi and Democrats pushed back against those suggestions, noting that the budget will reduce the projected 2009 deficit of $1.8 trillion to slightly more than $500 billion in 2014, the final year of the budget.

Pelosi said that the budget will move the country in a new direction after the years of the Bush administration, when budget surpluses turned into deficits. To make her point, she brandished a picture of her 1-month-old granddaughter.

“This is what our commitment is about,” she said. “It’s our commitment to the future to these children.”

Democrats, however, acknowledge that the deficit would remain above that level in future years under the budget’s policies.

Despite the concerns of the 51 centrist Blue Dog Democrats over the future deficits, all but 13 of them ended up backing the budget resolution.

{mosads}Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), the Blue Dog included in budget negotiations with the Senate, said this week that the final budget resolution was stronger than the previous plan because the final version had less non- defense discretionary spending. The budget resolution called for approximately $523 billion in such spending, which is $10 billion less than the House’s original request.

Boyd and other centrists also had worries over the inclusion of fast- track reconciliation instructions for healthcare and education reform.

The reconciliation rules will allow Senate Democrats to push through those reforms with just a simple majority instead of the 60 votes needed for most controversial legislation.

But Blue Dogs’ concerns were largely assuaged by a commitment by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-
Md.) to put new pressure on the Senate to pass a pay-as-you-go law that will require any future spending be offset by tax increases or cuts of other programs.

Pelosi and Hoyer, eager to retain Blue Dogs’ support, said that they won’t consider major tax bills from the Senate unless the upper chamber considers a pay-go law or offsets the costs of their tax policy shifts.

The Blue Dogs “were absolutely critical to arriving at the point we arrived at today where we have 233 people, and over two-thirds of the Blue Dog Coalition, voting for a budget that they had confidence was going to affect fiscal discipline, as well as the investments in the future that we need,” Hoyer said.

Some 14 Blue Dogs had voted against the resolution earlier. That number dropped by one when Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) switched his vote from “no” on the first vote to “yes” on final passage.

“This budget is not perfect, but it spends less [than the first version] while also accounting for other national priorities,” Donnelly said.

Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.), who had voted “no” earlier, also changed her position and backed the final budget plan. Kosmas had criticized the first budget for scheduling the 2010 retirement of NASA’s space shuttle. But she backed the final version after budget drafters pushed back the retirement deadline and included $2.5 billion in more shuttle funding.

Two earlier supporters of the Democratic budget, Reps. Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.) and Pete Stark
(D-Calif.), didn’t vote Wednesday because they were ill, while Rep.
John Lewis (D-Ga.), another backer of the budget, missed Wednesday’s vote because he was attendeding a Supreme Court hearing on a case that will affect the Voting Rights Act.

Jared Allen contributed to this report.