Virginia’s congressional delegation is divided over a bipartisan budget deal that greatly reduces any chance of a government shutdown for two years.
Congressional leaders have been secretly negotiating the deal with the White House for weeks, yet most people on Capitol Hill were kept completely in the dark. That’s why when the details were unveiled on Tuesday morning lawmakers had to scramble to understand the deal.
“It’s the right direction and I got a lot of detail questions that I’m grappling with.”
“The devil’s always in the detail. We’re now kind of lasering through on the specifics of this.”
“No it’s the worst possible scenario.”
Those Virginia lawmakers are Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Congressman Randy Forbes. That last voice is Republican Congressman Dave Brat. Brat is former economics professor and he hates the deal which hikes federal spending by eighty billion dollars over the next couple years. He says just because Democratic and Republican leaders reached the deal doesn’t mean it’s a compromise.
“So let me give you an example of compromise. The budget deficit is about $425 billion. How much of a deficit is that? Zero. Let’s do compromise, let’s do $200 billion, lets meet halfway, that’s what compromise is.”
The legislation also sends the Pentagon and the State Department an extra thirty two billion dollars, while avoiding a default on the nation’s debt. Brat says his party was put into power to cut spending, not to hike it. He says Republicans share the blame.
“I think everybody’s complicit. The whole conference is complicit because we didn’t do regular order. Everybody says they want regular order, well where’s the leadership? The American people are looking for leadership.”
Brat wasn’t the bill’s only opponent from the commonwealth. He was joined by Virginia Republicans Robert Hurt, Rob Wittman, Randy Forbes, Bob Goodlatte, and Morgan Griffith. Every Democrat in the House supported the measure, even though many had complaints. Virginia Democrat Bobby Scott says his party would be in a stronger spot to negotiate if they hadn’t extended tax cuts a couple years ago.
“The financial crunch we’re in is a direct result of the financial cliff deal we passed two and half year ago we passed 3.9 trillion in tax cuts extension and now you got to pay for it.”
Other Democrats say the two year budget agreement marks a new day for a hyper partisan Congress. Freshman Northern Virginia Democratic Congressman Don Beyer says the deal is a win-win.
“It’s not perfect but it also shows that Congress, Democrats, Republicans, the House, the Senate can compromise and work together with the White House.”
The measure also seeks to find savings by cutting payments to doctors under Medicare while finding waste in entitlement programs. Beyer says that’s a positive step that can save billions of dollars.
“Even some of the big social security defending nonprofits have said they’re okay. I was very impressed that AARP with its huge membership people over fifty have come out in favor of this deal and you know even a lot of the stuff on social security, Medicare was trying to close the holes by which people can cheat.”
But for Virginia, the biggest sword hanging over the state has now basically been removed: Those indiscriminate budget cuts called sequestration have been averted. Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine says it’s good that the debate over spending won’t occur until after the 2016 presidential election.
“Look a two year budget deal provided a whole lot certainty both to our own people and to the private sector, be good for the economy. A deal that lifts significant amount of the budget cap sequester cuts, very positive.”
Kaine says business in the commonwealth will benefit.
“So two year budgets are so much better for society yeah I mean because it really does it gives everybody a sense of certainty and there’s a cost of uncertainty on the economy and we’ve been living through that. If we can give two years of certainty I think that would be very good.”
Kaine is hoping lawmakers learn from this agreement, and adopt a two year budget in the future. He argues that would keep the government funded, even in the midst of election years.
