April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said he won’t vote for a budget proposal that includes “irresponsible” Republican spending cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency and Planned Parenthood.
“Some of the spending cuts they’re suggesting go way, way too far,” Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, said today on the NBC program “Meet the Press.” House Republicans “lose all credibility” by focusing on political issues instead of the deficit, Durbin said.
Democrats and Republicans are working on a 2011 budget to avoid a government shutdown when current spending authority ends April 8. President Barack Obama increased the pressure on lawmakers yesterday, telephoning Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Republican House Speaker John Boehner, urging them to get the budget impasse resolved.
Lawmakers have passed $10 billion in cuts thus far for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. House and Senate negotiators, joined by the White House, are considering plans to raise that total to about $33 billion.
Democratic Virginia Senator Mark Warner, a member of the Budget Committee, said $33 billion in cuts is “playing at the margins” of U.S. deficits. Congress, he said, shouldn’t let “extraneous factors,” such as policy-making additions to the budget bill, force a government shutdown, Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, also a budget committee member, said current talks are “playing small ball,” and said on CNN that he won’t support an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling without progress on “systemic reforms” of U.S. government spending.
“We can’t continue business as usual in Washington,” Cornyn said. “What we’re lacking is presidential leadership.”
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