Peter King: Give Oklahoma Tornado Relief Without Offsets

Moderate House Republicans such as Rep. Peter T. King are ready for another intraparty fight over whether emergency disaster aid should be offset, after a tornado ravaged parts of Oklahoma on Monday.

The New York Republican said that if central Oklahoma needs supplemental aid, Congress should grant it immediately without talk of offsetting the spending elsewhere.

“I think they should get every penny they need. I’ve been through this. We can do the political games later on, the important thing is to get them the aid as quickly as they need it and not to make a political issue out of it,” King said Tuesday.

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Boehner Wants Debt Limit Talks With Obama

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday that the White House should be prepared to negotiate with House Republicans on the debt limit – despite President Barack Obama’s insistence that he wants to extend it later this summer without strings attached.

“It’s easy to make a statement to that effect,” Boehner said of Obama at his Thursday morning news conference ,”but it’s just not reality.”

Of course, Boehner himself does not appear to have settled on exactly what he would be negotiating for, considering House GOP members emerged from Wednesday’s debt limit brainstorming session without a consensus on what to fight for.

Still, Boehner indicated that House Republicans would likely be seeking deeper spending cuts. “The fact is, that if the Treasury Department needs to pay the bills, the debt limit has to be dealt with, and should be dealt with in a responsible way,” he said. “[Obama] can’t continue to increase the debt limit without doing something about what’s driving the increase in the debt limit, and that is out of control spending.”

Boehner also took the opportunity to tout the House’s vote, set for later in the day, on a bill that would fully repeal Obamacare, the third of its kind since the GOP gained control of the chamber in 2011.

Standing beside the now-infamous, seven-foot “Red Tape Tower,” he gestured to the thousands of pages stacked on top of the other, tied with a red ribbon and balanced on a red hand-cart.

“These are the thousands and thousands of health care regulations,” Boehner explained. “And if we want jobs, we need to get rid of this, because this is getting in the way of employers hiring workers around the country.”

Boehner’s news conference also included mention of the two major scandals that have wreaked havoc on the Obama administration this week, namely revelations that the IRS inappropriately targeted conservative nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status and that the Justice Department seized records from Associated Press phone lines.

“Nothing dissolves the bonds between people and their government like the arrogance of power here in Washington,” Boehner said. “And that’s what the American people are seeing today from the Obama administration: remarkable arrogance.

“This house will stop at nothing to get to the American people the answers that they expect,” he continued. “But the best way to repair this damage is for the Obama administration to come forward with the truth — the whole truth — so that the American people will have all the facts.”

House GOP Still Struggling for Consensus on Debt Limit

They talked about balancing the budget in 10 years, repealing Obamacare, slashing spending and overhauling the tax code.

In other words, the House Republican meeting Wednesday afternoon to brainstorm a path forward for dealing with the debt limit basically consisted of “a laundry list of everything imaginable,” in the words of Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.

That isn’t to say it was a surprise, or a disappointment. Leading up to the GOP leadership-convened conference, lawmakers said that they expected it to be a listening session rather than a strategy meeting on what demands they should bring to the negotiating table as a condition of raising the debt ceiling.

Policy Committee Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., said Tuesday that he didn’t anticipate consensus around a single idea, but that perhaps “instead of 10 options, maybe we’ll come out with three or four.”

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Boehner Violates Hastert Rule Again

The House approved a bill Tuesday without the support of a majority of the Republican Conference, about one month after Speaker John A. Boehner sought to assure his conference that he intended to observe the “Hastert rule.”

The bill, which expands the government’s ability to buy land to protect historical battlefields at a projected cost of $50 million, passed under suspension of the rules, 283-122, with 101 Republicans supporting the bill and 122 voting against it. The Hastert rule, named for former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., calls for GOP leadership to only allow bills to pass that have secured “a majority of the majority” of the House Republican conference.

Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action for America, which issued a “key vote” against the bill, said, “Americans of all political stripes agree something has to change, and that Republicans can lead that change if they are willing to reject status quo in Washington. Violating the Hastert Rule to pass $46 million in battlefield pork won’t get the job done, though,” he said. “Last night’s vote was a missed opportunity.”

Although the top members of House GOP leadership voted for the bill, including Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, several of the lower tier members of leadership, including Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, and Oklahoma Rep. James Lankford, the Policy Committee chairman, voted “no.”

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Fix The Debt Packs Its Bags

Fix The Debt, the nonpartisan organization dedicated to addressing the country’s massive $16 trillion debt, has shifted its focus from Washington, D.C., to the states in an effort to gain traction for agenda.

Rather than spend all of its time attempting to influence lawmakers Inside the Beltway, the group has launched a new campaign aimed at building support for its campaign to push Congress to tame the federal debt by attempting to sway voters where members serve.

The effort began last week with a Nashville, Tenn., event headlined by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. On Wednesday, Fix The Debt hosted an Indianapolis event that was joined by Rep. Susan W. Brooks, R-Ind. Rather than targeting members, Fix The Debt plans to host events in conjunction with them as it seeks to assemble grass-roots support for a bipartisan approach to debt reduction and structural changes to budgeting that would prevent future flareups.

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The GOP’s Obsolete Talking Point

Lummis recently used a common GOP talking point on federal government borrowing that is actually outdated. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

In a column this week, Rep. Cynthia M. Lummis begins with a variation of a favorite GOP talking point.

“America’s Budget Made Simpler — The federal government now borrows $4.8 billion a day, every single day, to support its spending habit,” the Wyoming Republican wrote and tweeted.

The only problem is, that particular fact is no longer true.

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Breaking Down the 10 GOP ‘No’ Votes on the Ryan Budget

Forbes was one of 10 Republicans who voted against the Ryan budget on Thursday. He said it didn’t do enough to undo the sequester cuts that are hitting his military-rich district. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

We explained earlier this week why most conservatives would vote for the Ryan budget despite their complaints that it largely obtained balance in a relatively brief 10 years by including past tax increases.

That proved true Thursday, when only 10 Republicans voted “no” on the plan and decided against joining their party on one of its most unified votes. Here’s why they voted against House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan’s blueprint.

Six of the 10 said the Wisconsin Republican’s budget didn’t cut spending fast enough, while four said it cut spending too steeply or in the wrong areas.

Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Walter B. Jones of North Carolina — all “no” votes — are in the same ideological camp of libertarian-leaning Republicans urging far bolder spending cuts. Amash and Jones, who were thrown off their plum committee assignments in December, have become almost automatic “no” votes on spending bills that come out of the House. Massie has quickly joined their ranks.

Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas said in a statement that he voted against the budget because he wants “permanent spending controls,” not a “non-binding resolution” that can be “changed with each new Congress.” Full story

Why Most Conservatives Will Vote for the Ryan Budget, Despite Complaints

Salmon plans to vote for the Ryan budget plan. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call)

The budget blueprint offered by House Republicans last year would have balanced the budget in what seemed like a million years (actually, it was 27). This year’s plan offered by Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., balances in only 10. It also repeals Obamacare and institutes Medicare changes sought by Republican deficit hawks.

And yet, there is angst on the right about this budget.

“This year’s budget actually spends more money” than last year’s budget, wrote Daniel Horowitz at RedState.com, “while all of the balance is achieved through $3.233 trillion in new revenues.”

Those new revenues include tax increases agreed to as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations as well as tax increases that were part of Obamacare. That has led to some anger on the right, including from ForAmerica Chairman Brent Bozell, who said, “The only thing the Ryan budget makes clear is that Paul Ryan spent too much time campaigning with Mitt Romney.”

Among House conservatives, however, the complaints have been muted. Lawmakers who are concerned about the tax increases in the budget are planning on voting for it anyway. Full story