WASHINGTON — The House, voting largely along party lines, approved a bill last week that would require the president to estimate when the federal budget will be balanced.
The legislation, which passed 253-167, was another attempt by the House Republican majority to focus public attention on the budget morass. The Senate is not expected to take action on it.
“President Obama has a legal and a moral obligation to offer solutions to our fiscal challenges. So far, that hasn’t happened,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “Using the numbers from his last budget proposal, the federal budget would not have achieved balance ever.”
Last month, House Republicans focused on Senate Democrats for failing to adopt a budget resolution for nearly four years. The House approved a “No Budget, No Pay” provision that would withhold their paychecks if a budget resolution isn’t in place by April 15.
House Speaker John Boehner called “No Budget, No Pay” a first step in a GOP effort to bring “real fiscal responsibility” to Washington.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
House Democrats dismissed the latest Republican proposal as another partisan gimmick and chided them for wasting time rather than focusing on averting “sequestration,” the automatic across-the-board spending cuts that will be implemented next month.
“The majority calls this the “Require a PLAN” bill, but this bill is a stunt, not a solution. Now is the time to take action to avoid the harmful effects of sequestration, not for political posturing,” said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.
The debate came during a week when President Obama missed the deadline for submitting his budget proposal to Congress. He plans to submit it next month.
If the president fails to submit a balanced budget, the House bill would require him to provide a supplementary document estimating the earliest fiscal year in which the budget would be balanced and the steps he proposes to achieve that balance.
Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, a conservative who is running for Senate, was the only Republican to oppose the bill. Only 26 Democrats supported it.
Reps. Tom Cotton, R-Dardanelle, Tim Griffin, R-Little Rock, and Steve Womack, R-Rogers, voted for the bill. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Jonesboro, did not vote.