With just two weeks until a long Easter break, House Republicans are still struggling to show they are able to get something done in a Congress that has been painted as intransigent and divided during their year and a half as the majority.
Time is dwindling until lawmakers pivot from the business of legislating, and focus on their own re-elections. Republicans have previously sought to score signature accomplishments through legislation, but they complain these items have only died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
So during the next two weeks, Republicans will turn to messaging efforts by launching a two-pronged blitz against Democrats, first by highlighting the new GOP budget. The second salvo will coincide with the two-year anniversary of President Obama signing his health reform law into law; the Supreme Court will also hear arguments in a legal challenge to that law next week.
According to a Republican aide on the House Budget Committee, they see the GOP budget as legislation that “will stand in stark contrast to the president’s budget which ignores our debt crisis, and the Senate Democrat Majority budget, which doesn't exist.”
Paired with the new budget’s debut will be a vote to repeal a component of the president’s health care law, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The vote to eliminate the program, which Republicans say opens the door to rationed care, is being touted as the 26thtaken by the House to repeal part or all of the law Republicans deride as “ObamaCare.”
But Democrats view the upcoming fight as a winner with seniors, especially after they somewhat successfully messaged the Republican budget last year as a bid to end Medicare as it’s currently known to most Americans. They also argue that the budget, details of which will be released on Tuesday, essentially reneges on the spending levels agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans during last year’s debt limit deal.
"What the Republicans are putting forth ends the American Medicare guarantee, transfers cost to our seniors and contributes to the withering on the vine, which has always been their vision for Medicare," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters earlier this month, resurrecting a line Democrats used repeatedly after Republicans released their budget last year.
The Republican offensive comes seven months before Election Day, but marks an effort to add substance to their legislative record after a session of Congress that’s been defined by spending fights that threatened a government shutdown or credit default several times over the last year and a half.
After the failed debt limit negotiations, the FAA was forced to temporarily furlough 4,000 workers due to lawmakers’ inability to reach agreement on funding the agency; this led to a partial shutdown. The supercommittee chartered by the debt ceiling agreement similarly failed to reach an agreement on deficit reduction, and a payroll tax debate that saw Republicans relent at the last minute after initially rejecting the Senate’s two-month extension.
But the Republican majority still has yet to pass any legislation of tangible benefit to voters, such as the transportation and infrastructure legislation they hope to approve in the next two weeks.
Even that legislation is mired in intramural fighting, which has made it difficult to move forward with the bill, which was once said to be one of House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) top priorities.
Republican aides say they are still working to build consensus around their own 5-year bill, but Boehner himself has said that if they cannot find the votes on the Republican side they’ll be forced to take-up the Senate’s 2-year plan, or something like it.
Republicans are quick to point at the over 30 “jobs” bills that have passed through the House, but have failed to be brought up for a vote in the Senate, as proof that they are working to help a floundering economy.
“You can’t judge Republican accomplishments by the same yard stick as the Democrats,” a GOP leadership aide told NBC, “Our goal was never to create a new entitlement program, our goal is to limit the size of government.”
Republicans had also previously counted House passage of Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) JOBS Act earlier this month as a victory. But that bill is no longer in the “win” column after Senate Democrats decided to alter the bill with amendments.
According to Republicans, it’s not the enormous legislative accomplishments that will remain as their legacy – it’s the underlying shift in the culture on Capitol Hill that will resonate in future Congresses.
“Looking back in 10 years you're going to say that this was the Congress when government renewed its commitment to being accountable to the American people,” the aide said.
