Even if there’s enough support for the idea among Republicans 鈥 and it’s unclear there is, especially in the House聽鈥 there’s the issue of “scope,”聽or what’s currently聽included聽in the House and Senate bills.聽聽聽Neither measure to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits and prevent Medicare physicians from getting a 27 percent pay cut through this month relies on the war savings – formally known as thefund. And that’s an issue for Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., who chairs the House-Senate conference committee trying to resolve differences between the two measures.
“My view is it’s outside the scope of conference,” said Camp, who also chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. “It’s not in either the House or Senate bill at this point.”
If conferees went ahead and used the fund, it could cause problems when the legislation came to the floor if members chose to raise a point of order in objection. That is often more of an issue in the Senate聽than the House, where budget points of order are often waived before legislation is brought to the floor.
Such objections聽would be聽unlikely to succeed, since party leaders seldom bring a bill to the floor for a vote unless there are enough votes committed to pass the measure. And even if tried, there would probably not be enough votes to sustain it.
A related issue in using OCO funds to get rid of the SGR may be the precedent it would聽set. 聽“In the future, for other conferences, they might bring something into a conference that’s outside of its jurisdiction,” said G. William Hoagland, vice president of public policy for Cigna聽who聽previously served as a top Republican staff member of the Senate Budget Committee.聽 “The risk is, does it set up a precedent for the future that goes beyond this conference? That’s the danger.”
A second challenge to using the war savings to finance the “doc fix” is that that money is discretionary spending and Medicare falls under mandatory spending. Using discretionary funds to pay for mandatory spending would violate congressional pay-as-you-go rules, according to Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf.聽聽Conservative Republicans who ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility may be reluctant to waive budget rules to accommodate new federal spending, especially in an election year.
But again, if House and Senate leaders聽have the votes to pass the measure, they likely have the votes to聽get around that issue. It’s important to remember, however, that in the Senate, backers would need a supermajority of 60 votes to succeed.
, Elmendorf also notes that since OCO spending is set one year at a time, and聽has been provided only through 2012, future projections of the fund are just that 鈥 projections. “The funding has not yet been provided,” he writes, “and there is no 鈥極CO fund’ set aside in the Treasury from which resources can be drawn in future years.”
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