State Aid Clears Senate Hurdle, GOP Votes No Even Though Bill Reduces Deficit

The Senate voted 61-38 on Wednesday to break a Republican filibuster of a bill that will provide $26 billion in aid to cash-strapped states. Republican lawmakers, who opposed previous domestic aid bills because of their deficit cost, opposed this bill even though it would reduce the deficit.

Senate Democrats said the measure would prevent states from firing 290,000 teachers, firefighters and police officers. The Congressional Budget Office said it would reduce the deficit by almost $1.4 billion. But it wouldn't reduce the deficit in a way that appeals to Republicans (aside from Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, who support the measure).

"We didn't cut wasteful spending to do something good," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the GOP's foremost deficit hawks, said after the vote. HuffPost queried Coburn's office for details but did not immediately get a response.

The offsets themselves were not the only Republican objection: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that the measure would perpetuate "state bailouts."

Republicans declined questions from reporters at a press conference after the vote.

The bill's revenue offsets include $9 billion from removing a foreign tax credit loophole, $8 billion from spending cuts, $2 billion from tweaking Medicaid drug reimbursement formulas, and, controversially, more than $11 billion from cutting food stamp funding in 2014 (a previous version of the legislation made a smaller cut).

Democrats told HuffPost they will work to prevent the food stamp cuts from ever taking effect.

"I think we're going to be able to find a way to ensure that there's help for needy folks in terms of assistance with hunger," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). "We're going to make sure that vulnerable people are protected in terms of the assistance of the anti-hunger programs."

Sen. Ben Nelson, the Nebraska Democrat who joined a 50-day Republican filibuster of a series of bills to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits because they weren't "paid for," told HuffPost he was happy to vote for this bill.

"It's paid for, and If we don't get money back to the states to help with the cost of education then it will just shift back to local governments, local school boards, and you'll see property taxes rise," Nelson said. "So it's a challenge of whether or not you help bail out the states, because if you don't bail them out, it looks to me like most of them are gonna shift that cost right down to local governments. And when you do that, you're going to face rising property taxes, and one thing I know is, people dislike property taxes."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he hoped the House of Representatives, which adjourned for its August recess last week, would return to Washington. "I think it's going to be very difficult for the House to be away from Washington for five weeks while we've got this legislation needing their stamp of approval," he said. House leadership aides said they were discussing the possibility.

UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced via Twitter Wednesday afternoon that she'd bring the House back: "I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers' jobs and help seniors & children."

 

Comments

[hotbarb2614]

11:48 PM on 08/07/2010

Coburn will you please tell me why your a Senator,after going all those years to school to be a doctor.Wow you sure stink at both can't even help with a health care bill, but you had time to help fellow Senator Ensign with his mistess.

[Jase84]

12:09 PM on 08/07/2010

In order to be a deficit hawk, don't you have to have a record of reducing the deficit.

[dbrett480]

09:06 PM on 08/05/2010

Why is there a shock that the GOP voted no? They don't care about the deficit, they just say they do to pass bills that make their corporate sponsors happy. The fact that it saves the jobs of police officers, firefighters, and teachers is irrelevant to them. They call those heroes greedy while at the same time they extend take breaks to foreign corporations.

[1differentdrummer]

11:55 AM on 08/05/2010

See, it's okay to help some of the wealthiest people on Earth, they're deserving, but not the states that don't want to layoff teachers and cops. Being law and order types, you'd think Rs would act to save cop jobs but it is no surprise they want to further cripple schools by laying off teachers.

[Norsky]

11:54 AM on 08/05/2010

I think I understand why Ben Nelson's picture was included in the teaser.

[garystartswithg]

12:12 PM on 08/05/2010

there is a sentence in the middle that he voted for it. other than that i think he is in the running for creepiest looking senator. his pick scares me plenty -- though most senators are kind of the same -- like reanimated corpses hungry for brains.

[suzc]

10:44 AM on 08/05/2010

How does this bill help "seniors and children"? Hasn't Congress already said seniors won't get a penny in social security again next year? That's the only real help they can give us.

I'm also not sure how it helps states help teachers. I thought school districts made those teacher hiring and firing choices. And our districts are cutting budgets 10% a year now but not firing teachers outright to do it.

Wouldn't jobs bills and public works projects be more useful overrall?

[DUSAA-1775]

10:28 AM on 08/05/2010

As the HP strives to make its headlines more like the Inquirer's, the head lines get sillier and more ignorant: e.g.: 'even though bill reduces the deficit'.
Seriously, what poor illiterate staffer came up with that line ??
The states are required to balance their state budgets. Unlike the federal government, which can continuously increase the federal debt, the states must balance their budgets. For the federal government to waive it's credit card and say that it will borrow more money to help balance the state budgets is at best slight of hand,three card monty thievery and at worse, is a conspiracy between the states and Washington to commit unconstitutional acts.

[GBO]

08:49 AM on 08/05/2010

The funny thing is that even though some tea baggers' jobs are saved this action, they will still remain tea baggers.

[JeanPaulSatire]

08:29 AM on 08/05/2010

I have a bone to pick with you, Arthur, for describing Sen. Tom Coburn as "one of the GOP's foremost deficit hawks."

It's more accurate to describe him as "one of the GOP's foremost deficit hypocrites." He supported Bush's tax cuts (which he has admitted added to the deficit) and his preemptive war of choice that was nothing but deficit spending.

The difference in description is neither subtle nor irrelevant.

[phylsboutique]

09:27 AM on 08/05/2010

Fanned and Fav!

[Klarsonent]

09:39 AM on 08/05/2010

Agreed.

[muck-raker]

08:07 AM on 08/05/2010

oops, lets not forget this: America's poor rarely catch a break these days. The Senate is expected to vote today for a bill that will cut food stamp benefits by $6.1 billion to help fund Medicaid and teachers' jobs, reasoning they were too high now that food costs are lower than predicted. Proponents essentially argued that poor people had too much money for food.

As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains, last year's federal Recovery Act increased the amount of money for food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), to about $80 more per household each month. Amid the recession and high unemployment, about six million more people registered for the program in the past year alone, so program costs boomed from $20 billion to $65 billion. Meanwhile, food prices have deflated from last year's high rates. Now people are able to get more bang for their buck, hence the Senate's idea to cut payments. It's frustrating not only because America's poor, working, and middle class are suffering at record levels and could use this tiny leg up, but also because it's a really stupid cut for the overall economic picture: According to Klein, food stamps serve as one of the best forms of stimulus money, to the tune of $1.70 of activity for every dollar spent. In other words, our economy desperately needs this.
http://food.change.org/blog/view/senate_cuts_food_stamp_funds_leaves_oil_and_gas_subsidies_intact

[MAGLATINA]

09:50 AM on 08/05/2010

WHERE O WHERE HAVE FOOD PRICES DEFLATED? ON THE OTHER HAND IT IS TRUE THAT MONEY SPENT FOR FOOD IS AN ECONOMIC MOBILIZER... ... THE CONSUMPTION OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN THE MARKET UNIVERSE (BILLIONS) IS ALSO AN ECONOMIC MOBILIZER. WHO ARE THE "GENIUSES" ADVISING OBAMA???. ARE THEY REMINISCENT OF KINDERGARDEN ECONOMY?

[BlueSkyPilot]

07:04 AM on 08/05/2010

The GOP has mastered the fine art of tact. The ability to tell their constituents to go to hell and having them happily smile to be on their way.

When are the republican sheeple going to wake up from the repugs drug like hold over them.

[JeanPaulSatire]

08:32 AM on 08/05/2010

Far fewer are smiling, these days. I guess people aren't liking the scenery on that journey now quite so much as they did at the beginning.

[Nevervotesrepublican]

04:39 AM on 08/05/2010

Return the Favor in November...
Vote no on republicans.

[ksker]

04:04 AM on 08/05/2010

The definition of insanity, is this scheme Republicans in Washington are trying to pawn off, this notion, that Americans are in favor of Trillion Dollar War Deficits, or that we should now be willing to sacrifice ourselves and our children even further, after they have spent the last 10 years brazenly carousing themselves in a deficit speeding spree. They must be freakin’ nuts!

REPUBLICANS are NOT DEFICIT HAWKS; if anything; they have proven themselves to be, the epitome of DEFICIT PIGS.

[yoyodyne666]

03:38 AM on 08/05/2010

It's socialism I tell you, shout it from the rooftops .....

[Word Watcher]

02:43 AM on 08/05/2010

The GOP strategy is clear: make all Americans (except the wealthy) suffer, and perhaps they'll blame Obama and vote for Republicans. Let's hope voters are more astute than that.