GOP Moderates, Conservatives Split on Budget
Republican leaders in the House scramble for votes after failing to pass a budget bill that included cuts for food stamps, Medicare and other social programs. Now, moderate and conservative GOP representatives are at odds, and House Republican leaders appear to have lost control of party members.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now the story of an embarrassing stumble for Republicans in Congress. House GOP leaders were forced to pull their package of budget cuts from the floor yesterday after failing to find enough votes for them to pass. As NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports, this only compounds the problems of the party leadership.
ANDREA SEABROOK reporting:
It used to be that when the top Republicans in Washington, the president or House and Senate leaders, outlined their agenda, the rest of the party formed an immediate and enthusiastic pep rally around it. Not anymore. The cheering squad has broken into several factions, each supporting their own players and agendas. The result is a party that can't count on its own members to pass its priorities.
On one side, there are the conservatives, led in the House by Indiana's Mike Pence. They feel somewhat betrayed, Pence says, by the fact that five years of almost complete Republican domination of Washington has led to huge increases in the size of the federal government and the passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill, the first new entitlement program in 40 years. Well, no more, says Pence.
Representative MIKE PENCE (Republican, Indiana): The only thing that's different is that conservatives are making their importance felt. The moderates in this majority have always been effective in taking their case in public policy to this majority, and House conservatives have simply tried to be a bigger part of that debate.
SEABROOK: Pence and his group of conservatives have pushed their leaders to find even deeper cuts in spending than had been planned, $50 billion in cuts rather than 35 billion. And most of those cuts would come from the kinds of programs conservatives don't like: Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
On the other side of the party you have moderates, many of whom argue they haven't had much power in the party, either, and they wouldn't have chosen those programs to cut. At a press conference of what's known as the Main Street Caucus, Maryland's Wayne Gilchrist called it the old silent majority of moderate Republicans.
Representative WAYNE GILCHRIST (Republican, Maryland): This group here has injected a very positive concept which I think is more reflective of the American people. So Main Street, the moderate Republicans, have slowed this process down.
SEABROOK: In the budget negotiations, moderates pushed back against conservatives' budget-cutting zeal, forcing leaders to tone down a bit their changes to the food stamp program, some of their Medicaid reforms and to delete drilling in the Arctic altogether. And despite these concessions, leaders still couldn't get the bill passed. In between the conservatives and the moderate Republicans, you have their leaders trying to make them all get along, but the leadership is weakened, especially since the indictment of now former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Whip Roy Blunt is trying to do that job as well as his own.
And, of course, at the very top, Washington Republican number one is President Bush, whose approval ratings are skulking around 37 percent. That's who John Berthoud blames. He's the president of the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative group.
Mr. JOHN BERTHOUD (President, National Taxpayers Union): It's a message of disarray. If George Bush and his administration had been exercising any leadership on spending over the last four or five years, which they have not, this wouldn't be such a difficult exercise.
SEABROOK: And Bill Connolly, a political science professor at Washington and Lee University, says there's another reason congressional Republicans are distancing themselves from the White House.
Professor BILL CONNOLLY (Washington and Lee University): The president is not on the ballot in the 2006 election, whereas many senators and all House members are. And so they're naturally going to look to their own political interests, and that means attending to their constituents' concerns back in their states or in their districts.
SEABROOK: Republican leaders say they'll keep hammering on these issues until they get a deal their members can pass, but with the lawmakers spending more time at home and elections drawing nearer, the tone among Republicans is increasingly `every man for himself.' Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, the Capitol.
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