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Thursday: Confer/Concur, part II
posted at 2007-05-31 22:58 | Last modified 2007-11-14 10:38
Nose count
As of deadline time tonight, House Minority Leader Paul Stam says he has more than enough Dems on board with his own caucus to successfully carry a concurrence motion on the Senate version of the budget. That's not what House leadership is hoping for, obviously, and those 12 or 13 Dems could easily bolt over the weekend. But it certainly sets things up for an interesting Monday night session.
Backgrounder
House Bill Drafting chief Gerry Cohen informs me that up until 1987, budgets didn't go to conference committee at all - they didn't need to. Back in the age of the SuperSub, the two chambers had all the details worked out well before ink ever met paper. Most budgets went from first vote through both chambers and became law within a few days.
But when Liston Ramsey was ousted and replaced by Speaker Joe Mavretic, things changed. The chambers became more autonomous. And that's when budget conference committees became standard procedure.
So it isn't exactly accurate to say no chamber has concurred on a budget in institutional memory - heck, "institutional memory" is Gerry's second job title - but it is fair to say it hasn't happened in a couple of decades.
Why now?
Two potential reasons, really, as far as I can tell.
First, the Republicans actually kind of like the Senate budget proposal. You could argue that the Dems have brought this on themselves, to some extent, with their efforts to eschew the pork and special provisions of years past. That's made it a lot easier for the GOP to support their spending bills. And this year's Senate bill was bonus-round time, ditching two temporary taxes and capping the gas tax to boot.
The other reason is that the House GOP smells blood in the water. After a couple of legislative miscalculations (the most glaring of which was the defeat of the smoking bill), Republicans have reason to believe that the House Dems are not reliably united behind Speaker Joe Hackney. Running that caucus is a lot like herding cats - they run the gamut of positions on fiscal and social issues. The GOP is hoping it can pick off a few disgruntled conservative D's as allies. The idea isn't all that far-fetched: there's no shortage of candidates.
What if?
If Stam's bid should succeed, the budget would go to the Governor's desk. And that's more than likely where the bucks would stop, so to speak. Easley's advisors say there's no way he'll sign off on 1.2 billion in non-voter-approved debt - or some of the other funny-money "creative bookkeeping" Senate budget writers used to bolster their bottom line. A budget veto? It's not unthinkable, or even unlikely, if it comes down to that.
Comments? Drop me a line.
