Senate: Keep cuts, avoid shutdown

Without changes, the $85 billion in cuts for the current year will swell to nearly $1 trillion over a decade, enough to make at least a small dent in economy-threatening federal deficits but requiring program cuts that lawmakers in both parties say are unsustainable politically. As a result, negotiations are possible later in the year to replace the reductions with different savings.

The administration, as well as Republicans, picked its spots in arguing for flexibility in this year's cuts.

"My hope is, that gets done," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said earlier in the week of the effort to prevent layoffs among inspectors that could disrupt the nation's food-supply chain. "If it does not, come mid-July we will furlough meat inspectors," he added, departing from the administration's general position that flexibility should ease all the cuts or none at all.

The final vote was 73-26, with 51 Democrats, 20 Republicans and two independents in favor, and 25 Republicans and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana opposed.

Political considerations were on ample display in both houses as lawmakers labored over measures relating to spending priorities, both for this year and a decade into the future.

Rep. Mark Mulvaney, R-S.C., said he had wanted the House to vote on Obama's own budget, but he noted the president hadn't yet released one. "It's with great regret . . . that I'm not able to offer" a presidential budget for a vote, he said. He added he had wanted to vote on a placeholder - "34 pages full of question marks" - but House rules prevented it.

Minority Democrats advanced a plan that calls for $1 trillion in higher taxes, $500 billion in spending cuts over a decade and a $200 billion economic-stimulus package. Republicans voted it down, 253-165.

They are expected to approve their own very different blueprint on Thursday.

It calls for $4.6 trillion in spending cuts over a decade and no tax increases, a combination that projects to a balanced budget in 10 years' time. That spending plan would indeed be simply a blueprint, lacking any actual control over federal spending.