House approves 2-year budget

WASHINGTON -- The House passed a two-year budget plan in a bipartisan vote to avert a U.S. debt default. The measure needs final approval in the Senate, which plans to consider it in time to meet Tuesday's deadline to raise the debt limit.

Photo by SUSAN WALSH / AP
House Speaker John Boehner (second from left), arrives Wednesday for a meeting on Capitol Hill. The House passed a two-year budget plan Wednesday in a deal brokered by Boehner as he prepares to resign from office.

Photo by CAROLYN KASTER / AP
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks Wednesday during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington after a Special GOP Leadership Election.

The budget vote came after Republicans in the House nominated Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to be the 62nd speaker of the House, tapping the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to replace John Boehner of Ohio, who is leaving Congress after repeated battles with conservatives in his party. The full House will vote to confirm Ryan today.

"This begins a new day in the House of Representatives," Ryan, 45, said after the private vote. "We are turning the page."

To pass the budget measure, the House voted 266-167, rallying support from 187 Democrats and 79 Republicans, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., among them.

All of the votes against the bill were cast by Republicans, including Reps. French Hill, Bruce Westerman and Rick Crawford, all of Arkansas.

President Barack Obama's administration expressed support for the budget deal, saying it would provide "significant relief" from spending limits while investing in education, job training, research and defense.

"First and foremost, this bill takes the important step of protecting the full faith and credit of the United States," Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said before the vote. "It is fiscally responsible while not undermining or changing the structure of vital programs in any way."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he would vote against the deal because he objects to mechanisms lawmakers used to keep the legislation from increasing the deficit. He cited a provision to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as an example of "robbing from the future."

"I will not sell our future for this year's budget," Issa said.

The plan includes a 2-year deal on defense and nondefense spending levels, though lawmakers still must work out details before the government's current funding expires on Dec. 11. Spending caps would be increased by $80 billion in 2016 and 2017 and paid for with savings and revenue in the future.

"If we do not approve this budget, then what?" House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said on the House floor ahead of the vote. "Then we're back to continuing resolutions and sequester," he said, referring to short-term budget bills and spending caps.

Ryan echoed that statement.

"We are not going to have a House that looks like it looked the last two years," he said. "We are going to move forward, we are going to unify. Our party has lost its vision, and we are going to replace it with a vision."

He criticized the process used to reach the bill, saying that it "stinks," but issued a statement announcing his support for the deal because it "will go a long way toward relieving the uncertainty hanging over us."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said his chamber will quickly start weighing the legislation.

"It's not perfect, far from it," McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday. Still, he said it includes "the most significant reform to Social Security since 1983" as well as additional defense funding.

Second-ranking Senate Republican John Cornyn of Texas said he's "increasingly confident" enough Republicans will vote to move forward with the budget agreement.

'Good news' for Obama

The measure, House Resolution 1314, gives Obama almost 90 percent of the additional money for domestic programs he asked for in February and lifts spending limits that the administration contended were hindering the economy. Obama told a meeting of police chiefs in Chicago on Tuesday that the plan was "good news for everybody."

It would also lift separate caps on defense and nondefense spending in equal amounts in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. For 2016, the caps are lifted by $25 billion in each category and in 2017 the caps are lifted by $15 billion.

Boehner turned to Democrats for votes to bypass opposition from some conservative Republicans including members of the Freedom Caucus. Caucus member Mo Brooks of Alabama called the accord "financially irresponsible" because it would increase spending. Two conservative groups, Club for Growth and Heritage Action, announced their opposition in a joint statement that called the agreement a "zombie budget deal."

The deal is paid for, in part, by the U.S. selling 58 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It also changes the way partnerships such as hedge funds and private equity firms are audited in order to increase tax compliance, raising $11 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The proposal uses war funds, which aren't subject to budget caps, to increase defense spending, something Obama previously opposed. It would raise the Defense Department's overseas contingency operations and the State Department's war funds by more than $7 billion apiece each year over the Obama budget request. The White House had projected a larger decrease in war funds because of the nearing end of the conflict in Afghanistan in 2017, but the budget deal maintains higher spending levels through 2017.

The deal would prevent a major increase in Medicare premiums next year for some recipients by applying a surcharge in later years. It would also increase rebates drug manufacturers must pay to federal and state governments to cover the costs of Medicaid and change the way Medicare pays for services at hospital-owned doctors' offices.

Medicare Part B premiums for some recipients would be partially increased, but they won't have to pay all of a projected 52 percent spike in premiums, from $104.90 per month to $159.30. Under the deal, these high and low-income recipients -- about 30 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries -- would be charged an extra $16 per month.

These Medicare beneficiaries would also pay a $3 monthly surcharge until a general-revenue loan to the Medicare fund to cover the limit on premium increases is repaid. Higher-income recipients would pay even larger amounts, which will be graduated upward depending on their income bracket.

'Turning the page'

Ryan, who gained national prominence as the Republican Party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, won the overwhelming support of his colleagues in the nominating contest.

Republicans said the vote was 200-43 over Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida, his closest rival. He still must prevail in a vote of the full House. Democrats plan to nominate their House leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, for speaker.

Republicans hold 247 seats in the House, which is above the 218 majority needed to approve Ryan as speaker. And although Ryan's 200 votes in the nomination ballot was short of that 218, supporters said he would pick up backers now that he is the nominee.

"Anything over 218 wins; I think we'll be well above that," said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

In Ryan, some GOP members see an opportunity to press a reset button to unite the party. During a closed meeting Wednesday morning, Ryan assured fellow Republicans that was what he intended to do.

"Tomorrow we are turning the page," Ryan told reporters in brief remarks after he was nominated. He took no questions.

A reluctant candidate for speaker, Ryan was drafted by party leaders only after Boehner's apparent successor, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, took himself out of the running. Ryan had preferred to stay as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and was also concerned about the impact on his wife and three school-age children in Janesville, Wis.

Ryan will be the youngest House speaker since Rep. James Blaine, R-Maine, who was 39 when he was speaker in 1869.

Some Democrats said Ryan is a Republican they can do business with. At the same time they pointed to strong policy differences as shown in a budget he produced in 2011 that contained plans to cut social programs as well as turn Medicare into a voucher-like program and Medicaid into block grants to states.

Said Pelosi: "We welcome the debate."

Information for this article was contributed by Terrence Dopp, Kathleen Miller, James Rowley, Billy House and Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News; by Erica Werner, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; and by David M. Herszenhorn and Emmarie Huetteman of The New York Times.

A Section on 10/29/2015