GOP budget staffer: Freshmen complicating spending fight

The Republican staff director of the House Budget Committee said Friday that finding a solution to the fight over spending this year is an “enormous challenge” for his conference, which is dealing with a record number of freshmen demanding deep cuts to spending.

“We just have a lot of new people in the House,” Austin Smythe said. He said the freshmen, the fact that Congress did not pass a budget or appropriations bills last year and the fact that spending is out of control combine to make spending tasks very difficult.

{mosads}Smythe told an audience at a National Press Foundation event that his boss, Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), was “pleased” when the freshmen forced leadership, including Ryan, to nearly double the cuts in the 2011 spending continuing resolution passed on Saturday.

Ryan and House leaders had sought to cut $35 billion compared to 2010 funding, and the CR cuts $61 billion in the bill. The House and Senate have started negotiations on the cuts and failure could lead to a government shutdown.

Smythe denied that Ryan and House leaders think the revised cut is too deep, and he disputed a new Goldman Sachs analysis that says the cuts could damage the recovery.

He said that it would be “astonishing” if a $61 billion cut caused a recession in a $14 trillion economy.

Tom Kahn, minority staff director on House Budget and a personal friend of Smythe’s, said that the cuts are foolish and “political.” He noted cuts to public broadcasting and the Environmental Protection Agency, which appear to be more than about saving money.

Kahn said he is optimistic a shutdown can be avoided next week but that the freshmen are an “unknown factor” that could push more seasoned GOP leaders too far.

“It is not clear — I think, to anybody — the degree to which Speaker Boehner can control what the freshmen want,” he said.

Smythe said that Ryan and House Republicans are not involved at this point in a bipartisan Senate effort to put recommendations of the president’s debt commission into legislation.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) are involved in the effort.

Ryan voted against the debt commission recommendations, and Smythe said Friday that his committee is too busy with the 2011 spending to be involved at this point.

He did say, however, that Medicare has to be the starting point of any conversation on long-term deficit solutions, and the debt commission fell down on this.

Asked if Ryan will put a Medicare proposal in his 2012 budget resolution, Smythe said that decision has not been made yet. Ryan has backed converting Medicare to a voucher system but has not garnered a majority of his caucus in favor of that yet.

Smythe said his boss is eager to move beyond discussions of discretionary spending and tackle entitlements.