The Senate continues work today on its continuing resolution to authorize a government spending bill for 2013—and to prevent a government shutdown beginning March 27—and is trying to blunt some of the worst of the sequester cuts. The Senate is making changes to the House bill, hoping to have it passed well before the March 27 deadline. That is, if Republicans will let it happen.
What Senate Democrats would like to do with this budget is alleviate some of the sequester pain, and of course keep the government functioning after March 27.
The worst of the cuts in federal spending to a major infant nutrition program would be reversed. Embassy security and construction could be spared in the wake of the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya. And child care subsidies, once seen as critical to the success of welfare reform, would take a haircut, not the hammer blow that President Obama once loudly warned was coming. [...]
The bill “includes some very limited changes to fix pressing problems,” Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said. But, she cautioned, there was only so much she and her Republican counterpart, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, could do under the constraints of assembling a measure that could pass the House. [...]
“The combination of the various appropriations bills, funding transfers and reprogramming authority takes the doom and gloom out of sequestration,” said Chris Krueger, a senior policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities’ Washington Research Group. “You’ve still got $85 billion coming out. You’re still going to get the hit to the economy. But, he said, “it’s not in a truly irresponsible way.”
That means, for example, the WIC program gets an addition $250 million to soften the blow of the $333 million that is going to be slashed because of the sequester. The State Department’s embassy security, construction and maintenance budget will not be cut by $79 million as it would in the sequester, but boosted by $90 million. And federal child care and development block grants will be shaved by $65 million instead of $111 million. But what's saved for these programs means something else has to be sacrificed. Examples include energy programs that will see an additional $44 million slashed, and a major water project in Utah that will be cut $9 million instead of the $1 million slated under sequester.
That is, if and when Republicans decide to stop playing games. Monday night, Reid was forced to have a cloture vote, which passed, to try to bring an end to the debate and to force an agreement on amendments to the bill to get unanimous consent to just vote already. Otherwise a vote can't be held earlier than Thursday. Reid has agreed to nine amendments, most of them from Republicans, but rejected one from Sen. Kelly Ayotte that would shift defense money from one program to another. Reid rejected it because he's received the message from the House leadership that changing defense spending in the bill could force the House to reject it. And Ayotte has objected to allowing votes on amendments to start now.
Seems like the Senate is back to normal, twiddling its thumbs while the cloture clock winds down.