Budget

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan to replace this year’s sequester with money saved from drawing down the wars “undermines national security,” the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement that Reid’s sequester replacement proposal was “budget cowardice on the backs of our warfighters.”

“What he is proposing is not about saving money from the troop drawdown in Afghanistan; it’s about further hollowing out our military,” Inhofe said.

It's the first time the White House has backed a sequester replacement without new taxes.

The Senate voted 96-0 to confirm Sylvia Burwell as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

In a 22-14 vote, the Ways and Means panel approve a bill to prioritize payments if ceiling is reached.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew faced a skeptical Congress on Wednesday as he defended President Obama's request for $2.9 billion to fund international affairs programs next year.

Lew testified that aid to multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are a “cost-effective” way to solidify the world financial system, promote U.S. national security and boost U.S. exports. Lawmakers however raised doubts after the IMF bailed out five European countries – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus – over the past few years.

“Mr. Secretary, the IMF is controversial within the Congress,” House foreign operations appropriations chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) said in prepared remarks. “It was not created to bail out industrialized nations that cannot control their spending. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that President Obama’s party is abandoning him by proposing to replace sequestration with war savings rather than tax increases.

“The majority leader is clearly ditching the president on this issue,” McConnell said of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) bill to offset sequester cuts with war savings, which Reid tried to pass on Tuesday. “As you may recall, the president has said he’d only consider replacing the sequester with a tax hike. And whatever you want to say about OCO [Overseas Contingency Operations], it’s not a tax hike — it’s borrowed money that’ll have to be repaid later."

The full Senate will vote Wednesday on the President Obama's nomination of Sylvia Burwell to be his next budget director. Read more...

Republicans said the two parties should first agree to a framework for talks.

"Looking at Washington, D.C., from Montana, there is no bigger broke-down pickup than the Senate," Schweitzer told The Hill. 

The Democratic leader accused Republicans of doing "a complete 180" on their call for "regular order."