In recent weeks, the conservative Republican Study Committee, the conservative caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, has ratcheted up the pressure on GOP leadership to deal with the growing budget deficit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Iraq. When RSC leaders held a press conference announcing "Operation Offset" House GOP leadership aides lurked about the conference belittling RSC to the assembled media and House leaders subsequently criticized RSC members for "undermining the unity of the GOP conference," being "unrealistic about the Senate’s willingness to go along," and creating negative publicity for House Republicans."
In the weeks following the launch of Operation Offset, the House leadership incrementally embraced the proposals of the RSC. First, they committed to find additional savings from a process called "reconciliation," which forces committee chairman to find a specified amount of savings within their committees. The following week, they embraced a 2% across the board spending cut and what do you know, they started to get positive responses from the RSC, the GOP Conference – and even the media.
Last night, Washington media outlets announced that House leadership is stepping back – temporarily – from those across the board cuts. The reason seems to be three powerful committee chairman: Duncan Hunter, Armed Services; Don Young, Transportation; and Peter King, Homeland Security. From everything I’ve been privy to it seems, however, that Duncan Hunter is the main obstacle to across the board cuts.
Chairman Hunter has a large committee, consisting of 66 Republicans and Democrats. Rarely do the
members, Republican or Democrat, support, advocate, or embrace any cuts in military spending. Most of the members also have bases in their districts which complicates the picture even further.
The Chairman has been very effective in marshalling his members whenever there has been a threat to defense spending, most notably, in trying to get modest growth reductions through the House earlier this year in the form of the FY 2006 budget resolution. Hunter had his team primed and ready at the GOP conference meeting to decry proposed reductions and was successful in tying up the efforts of budget hawks.
RSC has made an impact under the leadership of chairman Mike Pence of Indiana. At the beginning of the year, RSC forced budget enforcement mechanisms (though more modest than hoped for), blocked David Dreier’s ascendence to temporary Majority Leader, convinced the President to suspend Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage requirement) for hurricane-affected reconstruction, blocking affordodable housing funding in the reform of FreddieMac and FannieMae, and now spending reductions.
This battle within in the House Conference will be worth watching in the coming weeks.
Worth noting: RSC also held "interviews" with the 3 candidates for Appropriations Chairman earlier this year. The group was divided over the three but the majority threw their support behind Californian Jerry Lewis. Lewis, since becoming chairman, has been true to his word in working with conservatives to find spending reductions and deserves credit for making a very positive impact on the process.