This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 27, 2011 - WASHINGTON - The bipartisan spirit at the State of the Union speech was already fading Wednesday as Missouri's U.S. senators separately bashed aspects of Congress while Illinois' senior senator restricted himself to lambasting Republican budget-cutters.
At a morning appearance at the Newseum, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., complained that "our government was designed not to be efficient. And if any part of the government proves that, it's the U.S. Senate."
A couple of hours later, Blunt joined nine other Republicans at a Capitol news conference to announce their support for a new balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution -- an approach that concedes, in effect, that Congress is incapable of balancing the federal budget.
"It's about spending no more money than you can collect," Blunt said, "and being able to collect as much money as you're committed to spend." Another sponsor of the amendment, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill, said simply: "When our borrowing needs exceed $1.5 trillion, it's time to pass a balanced budget amendment."
On the same spot a few minutes later, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. -- the Senate's second-ranking Democrat -- called a press conference with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bash a $2.5 trillion spending-cut plan advocated by a key group of House Republicans as a "meat ax" approach to budget reduction. The Democrats warned that making those cuts in discretionary spending over 10 years would cost thousands of jobs and endanger the public by forcing layoffs of FBI agents, food-safety inspectors and nuclear-safety experts.
"The Republicans view the budget like a pinata," Durbin charged. "They believe if you put on a blindfold and swing away, no matter what you get is wasteful."
The senators' comments came on a day when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the federal budget deficit will hit $1.5 trillion this year, another new record.
While Durbin promised to take a look at the latest version of the balanced-budget amendment -- a perennial initiative whose prime sponsor in this Congress is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah -- the Illinois senator said he was wary of "rushing to amend the Constitution," an approach he compared to "taking a [paint] roller to a Rembrandt."
Under the amendment backed by Hatch, Blunt, Kirk and others, federal spending would eventually be capped at 20 percent of the gross domestic product and the federal government would be required to balance its budget unless Congress votes to waive the requirement due to war or economic emergency.
Durbin did not give details on how he would reduce the deficit, but he confirmed that he is involved in talks with three other senators who served with him on the bipartisan deficit-reduction commission -- Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Mike Crapo, R-Wyo., and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. -- to try to develop a bipartisan approach that might stand a chance of Senate passage.
Mccaskill Goes After Congressional Pay
Meanwhile, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., continued what she called a "clean up Congress" campaign on Wednesday by introducing a bill co-authored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to ban automatic congressional pay raises.
"Someone decided years ago that it would be a great idea for members of Congress to get an automatic cost-of-living pay raise every year that could only be blocked if there was congressional action," McCaskill said. "That's backward. You should not have to block a pay raise in order to stop it. You should have to earn a pay raise in order to get it."
Her bill -- similar to legislation advocated unsuccessfully for years by former Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin -- is sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Az., and has several Senate co-sponsors. Congress passed separate bills in the last two years to block pay raises, but McCaskill said "we need to permanently end this practice."
The pay-raise bill is part of McCaskill's wider effort to change Senate rules that she regards as wrong -- including her efforts to ban earmarked appropriations and "secret holds" that allow senators to block or delay legislation or nominations anonymously. She is hoping that the Senate will vote on the secret holds issue later this week, and said her wider reform package would involve "a number of other proposals."
Responding to a question from the Beacon, McCaskill said other parts of that initiative would address questions such as: "Is the money that they save from their [congressional] budgets going to reduce the deficit? Do we have the accountability on travel money that we should in the public sector? And do we have the right kind of auditors to look at the way Congress spends money on their own budgets?"
McCaskill praised President Barack Obama for pledging in his State of the Union address to veto any bill with earmarks, but criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for dismissing the earmark issue.
"I will fight Harry Reid on this. He's wrong" on earmarks, McCaskill said. "I take a lot of criticism in the [Democratic] caucus because of how outspoken I am about this very arbitrary and flawed process of earmarking."
Blunt's Critique of the Senate
While McCaskill criticized her party's Senate leader, Blunt focused his criticism on the lack of legislative movement and administrative progress in the Senate.
At a forum sponsored by the Politico news organization, Blunt expressed frustration at the slow pace of the Senate -- in comparison with the House, where he served for nearly 14 years until he started as Missouri's junior senator this month.
Blunt said he used to tell former Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo, that "if the Senate's a club, the House is a truck stop. I like the truck stop because it is bubbling all the time with energy."
Walking with another senator across the Capitol on Tuesday evening for the State of the Union address, Blunt said he told his companion: "Boy, it really seems slow over here to me." And the experienced senator responded: "It's slow until we get to 'glacially slow.' "
Blunt said that, so far, "I'm having a little bit of a hard time adjusting to that. The Senate is smaller, I think it expects you to work more in a bipartisan manner -- but it's also in no hurry. You know, we used to vote on the House floor all the time. If we've voted yet [this Congress], I've missed it."
That changed later Wednesday, when the Senate resumed after a recess and started legislative work again. But Blunt said he has been told he'll be stuck in his windowless temporary office in the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building for at least another couple of months -- until a permanent office is ready.
"We don't have committee assignments yet. We don't have offices yet," he said. "It is clearly a different body" than the House.