WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan budget bill that would ease some but not all of painful budget cuts that would otherwise slam the Pentagon and domestic agencies passed a pivotal test in the Senate on Tuesday.
The Senate advanced the measure over a filibuster threshold on a 67-33 vote that ensures the measure will pass the Democratic-led chamber no later than Wednesday and head to the White House to be signed into law.
Top Senate Republicans opposed the bill but didn’t try to engineer its defeat. It won sweeping GOP support in the House in a vote last week.
The measure would ease some of the harshest cuts to agency budgets required under automatic spending curbs commonly known as sequestration. It would replace $45 billion in scheduled cuts for the 2014 budget year already underway, lifting agency budgets to a little more than $1 trillion, and it also would essentially freeze spending at those levels for 2015. It substitutes other spending cuts and new fees to replace the automatic cuts and devotes a modest $23 billion to reducing the deficit over the coming decade.
It would also stabilize a broken budget process after a partial government shutdown in October that inflicted political harm upon Republicans. The GOP has since rebounded because of the much-criticized roll-out of Obama’s health care law and the party wishes to keep the focus on that topic rather than Washington political brinksmanship.
“This bipartisan bill takes the first steps toward rebuilding our broken budget process. And hopefully, toward rebuilding our broken Congress,” said Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., who negotiated the measure with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., his party’s vice presidential nominee last year. “We’ve spent far too long here scrambling to fix artificial crises instead of working together to solve the big problems we all know we need to address.”
Twelve Republicans voted with Democrats to advance the measure over a 60-vote filibuster threshold demanded by GOP leaders.
Announcements Monday by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Georgia Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, as well as a strong hint by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., that they would back that step appeared to seal enough GOP support to advance the measure. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., whose home-state GOP colleague Ryan was a top negotiator on the bill, swung behind it Sunday.
Other Republicans voting to advance the measure included Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Some Republicans, like Alexander and Blunt, said they would oppose the measure on final passage. Flake says he’s a “lean ‘no’” as well.
“Sometimes the answer has to be yes,” Hatch said. “The reality is that Republicans only control one-half of one-third of government. Ultimately, this agreement upholds the principles conservatives stand for and, with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, it is the best we could hope for.”
Most Senate Republicans opposed the legislation despite the sweeping GOP support it enjoyed in the House last week. But the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, opposed the measure. He is embroiled in a primary with a tea party challenger, businessman Matt Bevin and said he wants to preserve hard-won spending cuts he helped engineer in a 2011 budget deal..