The New Media Journal | Democrats to Move Measures with High Price Tags

The New Media Journal | Democrats to Move Measures with High Price Tags

Congress faces a crush of votes on big-ticket items before the Memorial Day recess, setting up a debate on deficits less than six months before the November elections.

Democratic leaders are looking in the next three weeks to send President Barack Obama a slew of measures that cost more than $200 billion, including a multiyear extension of unemployment benefits, an extension of expiring tax provisions and Medicare doctor payments totaling $180 billion and a $33 billion Afghanistan war supplemental bill.

Because most of those costs won’t be paid for, Republicans plan to use those bills and the Democrats’ budget blueprint to highlight massive deficits ahead of the congressional midterm election. Republicans have recently been pointing to Greece’s dismal fiscal situation as a warning, claiming that the US will be headed for a similar fate unless the deficits are curtailed.

“Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree is scaring the hell out of the American people,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). “It has to stop.”

The unemployment benefits program, which provides someone with up to 99 weeks of jobless benefits, has received two monthlong extensions in the past two months. It is unclear how much the next extension designed to last for the rest of this year will cost, but the price tag is expected to be in the tens of billions...

Democratic leaders plan to move quickly on those issues because the jobless insurance program and Medicare doctor payment rate expire in early June, and because Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the war funding bill must be completed this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said last week.