At best, Republicans could use their votes to avoid the impending chasm as a lever to win Republican policy victories in negotiations later this year. At worst, they could allow the cuts to be punishment for Democrats for using the reconciliation tool to deny entry to the Republican Party while the majority party pushes Biden’s package with only 51 votes in the Senate.
“I don’t know if I should be worried or not,” said House Budget President John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), In an interview. “I was told not to worry.”
The solution could be as easy as inserting a text into the mandatory legislation before the cuts defined in mid-January, as Congress had already done with little fanfare. Unlike a reconciliation bill, however, this solution cannot be passed by the Senate by a simple majority and requires 10 Senate Republicans to sign it.
“Everyone doesn’t seem to care about that,” said Yarmuth. “I don’t know, I was told it is too shallow that we will do that.”
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s office did not respond to two requests for comment on whether Republicans would help waive mandatory spending stemming from Biden’s pandemic aid plan.
In “normal” times, “Republicans would almost certainly agree to this,” said David Wessel, director of the centrist Brookings Institution.
“But these are not normal times, and you can’t be sure that Republicans would agree to that,” said Wessel, who runs Brookings’ Hutchins Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy. “I think there is a small but significant risk that Republicans will use this as a lever to get something out of Democrats.”
Both parties have repeatedly voted to waive the rule and avoid cuts with other major reconciliation packages. Democrats joined Republicans to avoid $ 150 billion in cuts that would have been caused by the 2017 tax reform, including $ 25 billion from Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office at the time determined that certain programs, such as the Public Health and Prevention Fund under Obamacare, would have been virtually eliminated.
Lawmakers also stopped cutting when it came to Obama-era stimulus legislation and several tax-reduction packages under George W. Bush.
Some on Capitol Hill say times have changed, however.
“While Democrats have rushed to protect Medicare and other significant cut programs after Republicans used reconciliation to approve tax cuts for the rich, we need to be realistic that Republicans are less likely to do the same for us.” , said a Democratic aide to the House, who asked to remain in the background in order to openly discuss concerns.
“Are we really going to find 10 Republicans in the Senate to avoid these cuts after finding Jesus in the national debt again? Let’s be realistic, ”said the advisor in a statement. “There is a good chance that they will allow these cuts to happen and paint the Democrats as responsible, as we have full power in Congress and the White House.”
Two other Democratic aides totally rejected the threat and said that concerns about the current cuts have not been raised, as the House and Senate have gathered the details of Biden’s project.
“This is not a concern,” said a senior Democratic aide. “We don’t worry about that, because we know that whenever this problem has arisen in the past, it has always been fixed.”
Provisions to avoid cuts could be added to mandatory legislation, such as annual spending bills, ensuring that it would be politically expensive for Republicans to vote against waiving reductions.
“So, are they prepared to close the government in exchange for cuts?” said the aide. “Nobody is going to allow Medicare or farm workers’ programs to be cut because of the reconciliation project … I can assure you of that.”
Democrats are also considering using reconciliation twice in this session – once to approve the Biden pandemic aid plan and, again, to promote a huge infrastructure and climate package. Such legislation would also increase the cuts that Congress must avoid.
Matthew Dickerson, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Republicans could offer their support to avoid reductions in exchange for more measures to reduce the country’s debt and deficit, as an agreement to curb spending on mandatory programs.
“It’s a useful leverage point for Republicans,” said Dickerson, who runs the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. “We cannot continue spending at the rate we are spending.”