Murray worried; McMorris-Rodgers threatens

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Murray ‘very worried’ GOP will shut down government
Posted by Joel Connelly on January 15, 2013

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is “very worried” that Republicans in Congress will shut down the federal government later this winter, when the feds’ spending authorization runs out, in order to force deep and unwise cuts in federal spending.

“We can deal with the budget challenge, but we can’t do it by threatening our economy.  We seem to go from crisis to crisis, from month to month, with threats if people do not get their way.  The country is tired of it,  and American families know this is not a way to plan,”  Murray said in an interview with seattlepi.com.

Murray has  just taken over as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, a panel on which she has served since arriving in the Senate 20 years ago.

A trio of budget crises loom in late winter.  Congress must raise the debt limit to pay for spending it has already approved.  The “continuing resolution” that funds the government is due to run out.  And, as part of the 2011 debt limit deal, deep “sequestrations” could kick in that would hit both the Defense Department and federal domestic programs.

Republicans, including one from this state, are threatening the worst.

“I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious. We always talk about whether or not we’re going to kick the can down the road.  I think the mood is that we’ve come to the end of the road,” Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, R-Wash., who chairs the House Republican Conference, told Politico earlier this week.

Murray sees an obsession with the deficit, to the detriment of long-range planning for the nation’s future.

“What’s really important has been our total focus on the debt and deficit, when our concern should be more about setting priorities, and looking to what our country will look like in 10 or 20 years and what the country needs to invest in to educate our children and assure our infrastructure,” Murray said.

And, to that end, Murray feels any solution to the budget crisis must include “both revenue and controls on spending.”

“We can’t just go in and slash spending, particularly non-defense programs that are still vital to our future,” Murray added.  “Any solution must be fair and balanced.”

Sequestration, which would make deep cuts in defense spending, would be felt heavily in this Washington.  The military is the Evergreen State’s second-largest employer.  As an example, Fairchild Air Force Base is a major presence in the Spokane area, which is in McMorris-Rodgers’ district.

“As currently written, sequestration would seriously impact both the military and non-military sides of the budget,” Murray said.  “It would hit not only the Pentagon, but early childhood education, and tasks essential to our state’s ability to take care of itself.  It would have a huge impact.”

What can prevent this?  Murray, who came to the Senate 20 years ago in more civil times, offered this suggestion:

“Let’s sit down together and work out our differences.”

In today’s polarized Washington, D.C., that is asking a great deal.  Murray was Democratic co-chair of a bipartisan “super-committee” created in the summer of 2011 to work out a budget deal.  It failed to reach an agreement.

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