House Republicans Turn From Dissent To Unity In Budget Votes

For House Republicans, what a difference a day makes.

On Thursday, 59 members of the GOP conference broke with leadership to oppose a 2011 spending compromise, ignoring pleas for support from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Twenty-four hours later, the party turned to the 2012 budget blueprint and won a near-unanimous endorsement from rank-and-file Republican on a proposal to slash nearly $6 trillion over the next decade. All but four GOP lawmakers backed the plan, with just one member of the feisty freshman class, Rep. David McKinley (W.Va.), opposed it. (Every Democrat opposed the bill.)

Afterward, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was crowing.

“The budgets are the hardest [bills] to pass in Congress, we’re always told. Look at what’s transpired,” he told reporters off the House floor.

The vote was a needed victory for McCarthy, who, according to a congressional source, was forced to ask his Democratic counterpart, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), for help assuring passage of the 2011 spending agreement.

In 2009 by contrast, 20 Democrats voted against their party’s budget blueprint. House Democrats didn’t even attempt a full budget in 2010, knowing it would not have the votes to pass in the Senate.

Top Democrats in the Senate have said that the GOP's 2012 budget is dead on arrival.

The Republican majority held strong despite heavy pressure from Democrats, who warned that the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would be a top campaign issue in 2012. President Obama issued a harsh condemnation of the GOP proposal on Wednesday, calling it a “deeply pessimistic” plan that “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known.”

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