Something odd happened here on Tuesday. The Senate advanced a two-year bipartisan budget deal that will now surely be sent to the president for his signature later this week without waiting for a cliff, a chasm, a deadline or a shutdown to force its hand.
Just like that, declarations sounded in Washington that the city almost seemed to be working again. The assertions may be little solace to competing ends of the ideological spectrum that saw the budget deal as a craven capitulation to the spenders or the cutters, depending on which end was looking at it. But flawed as critics complained it was, the deal represented a break in the paralysis that has gripped the capital for years.
The question is whether it will be a turning point that will clear the way for agreements on long-stalled issues like Medicare, the tax code and immigration or simply be an asterisk in the history books. To President Obama and his strategists, the cross-aisle accord offers what one called "green shoots of hope" that next year may turn out better than this year. Along with the change in filibuster rules making it easier to confirm nominees, the White House sees prospects for progress, even if limited.
"The year is ending with some real positive signs," said Dan Pfeiffer, the president's senior advisor. While he cautioned against expecting "a new era of compromise," he said that without the perennial budget battles, there might be more opportunities to address other priorities. And without filibusters, he said, more Obama appointees will be in place to carry out the president's agenda.
The pending passage of the budget deal freed the House speaker, John A Boehner of Ohio, to confront conservative activist groups that had been promoting conflict and to empower lawmakers more interested in governance than ideological brinkmanship. Previously he had been more sympathetic to the Tea Party position and had sought to avoid rankling the far right.
But others scoffed at the newfound optimism, arguing that in its zeal to show that Republicans and Democrats could finally work together, Congress had substituted good will for good policy. "We're in a big hurry to show how functional we are," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. "Even when we're functional, we're dysfunctional."
Sceptics forecast only a temporary lull, a calculated cease-fire in the partisan wars motivated in part by the desire of Republicans to avoid the political damage of the recent government shutdown and to not distract from the mangled kickoff of Obama's health care exchanges. Another deadline on raising the debt ceiling by next spring could reignite the trench warfare.
After all, many of the structural impediments to compromise remain, and philosophical divisions have hardly disappeared. Jared Bernstein, a former Obama White House economist, compared the budget deal to the Christmas truce during World War I, when troops held fire until after the holiday.
The deal represents common ground between the leadership of the two parties, but it "turns out to be a tiny patch of earth," Bernstein said. "So I'm not seeing a ton of 'Kumbaya' coming, though I hope I'm wrong."
Former Representative Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican, said party leaders concluded that the government shutdown was too damaging to repeat but that many lawmakers will still be wary of compromise for fear of primary challenges from conservatives next year.
"I think there's going to be a lot of the same kind of unwillingness, because people are unwilling to throw away their careers," said Edwards, author of The Parties Versus the People, a book on Washington dysfunction. "Rush Limbaugh can turn out more primary voters than the Chamber of Commerce can."
Still, the spirit in Washington is notably different from this point in recent years, when the two parties were often locked in end-of-the-year battles over the size of government.
The Senate on Tuesday formally ended debate on the spending plan by a vote of 67 to 33, easily surpassing the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster and attracting a dozen Republicans, more than expected. Having already cleared the House, the budget is poised for final passage in the Senate as early as Wednesday.
The plan would restore $63 billion to military and domestic programs over two years compared with spending caps set to resume in January. Over 10 years, it would reduce deficits slightly by trimming military and federal-worker pensions, extending a 2 per cent cut to Medicare providers and making other changes.
Even its authors called it a modest step toward addressing the deficit in a more rational way. But those who voted to break the filibuster included Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Republican leadership; Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and Tea Party favourite; and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a Republican who is facing a challenge from the right next year. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, called it a "vote against extremism."
White House officials were careful not to suggest that the partisan "fever" had broken in Washington, as Obama once predicted it would. But without having to fight an overall spending battle for two years, they said they might have more running room to push for initiatives like construction of roads and bridges.
Obama's advisors were also encouraged by the elimination of filibusters for nominations. Aides said, for example, that Republicans have held up major elements of the president's housing agenda by denying him his choice to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. "Being able to get our people through," Pfeiffer said, "means that we have more tools in our executive-action tool kit."
Lawmakers saw possibilities for movement as well on issues like curbing National Security Agency surveillance. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said the difference now is the comity between the Senate and House. While bipartisan thaws in the Senate have produced agreements on immigration, farm and infrastructure legislation, in the past they hit roadblocks in the House.
Democrats would like to use the moment to advance farm legislation and extend unemployment benefits. An immigration overhaul "would be the jewel," Klobuchar said, but sceptically.
Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has already begun work with his counterpart, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, on the first comprehensive spending bill in years.
Such optimism is tempered by the next approaching deadline. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said Congress will have to again raise the debt ceiling in March. That could renew the wars or, possibly, prove a useful deadline to produce the next bipartisan agreement, a more sweeping deal on tax and entitlement programme changes.
"I doubt if the House, or for that matter the Senate, is willing to give the president a clean debt-ceiling increase," said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. "Debt-ceiling legislation is a time that brings us all together and gets the president's attention."
©2013 The New York Times News Service
