Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed on a largely bipartisan voted to spending targets for the fiscal year 2013 appropriations that are the same as the spending targets in the last summer's debt deal. Why is this so important? Well, as noted in this blog post, the House's budget would set spending below those spending targets and this produced a preemptive veto threat from President Obama for any appropriations bills sent to him below the agreed upon spending targets. It was not surprising to see the House Republicans and the Obama White House on different sides of this issue. What was more surprising was the bipartisan 27-2 vote of the Senate Committee to agree to set the spending targets to the same as level as those in the debt deal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of those Republicans voting with the majority. This seems to send the signal that Senate Republicans are ready to move forward the debt deal spending limit, which again, are higher than the House spending limits, even if it means a tension with their Republican colleagues in the House. Getting to the appropriations end game just got a little more interesting.
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