Politics

On a vote that fell largely along party lines, the House of Representatives has approved a GOP measure reauthorizing the expired Violence Against Women Act — the latest issue that was once the subject of broad bipartisan agreement in Washington to fall victim to election year politics.

The House bill passed on a 222 to 205 vote. Democrats opposed the Republican bill because they said it was too narrow. They said it should have included language barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in grant programs funded through the 18-year-old program and provisions expanding visas offered to illegal immigrants who assist in the prosecution of their abusers.

The U.S. Senate formally rejected President Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget request Wednesday, along with a series of Republican alternatives, as Republicans forced votes on the competing budget plans to highlight Democrats’ failure to advance a formal budget resolution.

The Senate has failed to adopt a formal budget resolution, laying out spending and revenue targets for the coming year, for three years.

Democrats say the exercise is unnecessary this year because Democrats and Republicans wrote spending caps for the year into law in the hard-fought summer deal that raised the nation’s debt ceiling.

Republicans counter that the debt deal does not replace a legal requirement that Congress adopt a budget resolution for the year.

Among the Republican plans advanced on the floor was the spending plan authored by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). It would balance the budget over the next three decades, in part by cutting deeply into social safety network spending and revamping Medicare. Like Obama’s budget, it failed to garner adequate votes to continue to a full debate.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifying at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in April. (Brendan Hoffman - Bloomberg) Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner cautioned Republicans on Tuesday not to raise questions about whether the United States will once again raise its legal debt limit late this year, saying the economy is already starting to feel the effects of the potential fiscal cliff confronting Congress at the end of the year.

Geithner’s comments came as the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill began reacting to a new ultimatum from House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who told an annual conference hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation later Tuesday that Republicans will insist again this year that any increase in the debt limit be matched dollar-for-dollar with equal spending cuts.

Republicans made the same demand in the negotiations that led to an economy-rattling partisan showdown over the nation’s last debt ceiling hike last summer.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he agreed with Boehner’s framework for requiring cuts equal to any debt ceiling increase.

“A request of the president to ask us to raise the debt ceiling ought to generate a significant response to deal with the problem of deficit and debt,” he said.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney responded that a “charade” like last summer’s fight over the issue would hurt the economy.

“It can’t possibly be the case that the right prescription for what we need to do right now is to engage in the kind of political brinksmanship that, unfortunately, congressional Republicans engaged in last year,” he said.

Boehner told the group that the dollar-for-dollar match is necessary to force Washington to embark on the kind of fiscal restraint and entitlement reform that will slash deficits over time and stabilize the economy. The prepared remarks call the debt ceiling vote an “action-forcing event” that will require Washington to tackle its tough choices.

But speaking to the same group, Geithner warned Tuesday that it is not “responsible” to call into question whether the nation will pay back money it has already borrowed by raising the debt limit.

House Speaker John A. Boehner plans to demand deep cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the federal debt limit, setting the stage for another tense standoff with Democrats over the soaring national debt.

In remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday at the Peter G. Peterson fiscal summit, Boehner (R-Ohio) welcomes the next battle over the debt limit as an “action-forcing” opportunity to rein in government spending and said he will “again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt-limit increase.”

“This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance,” Boehner says, according to highlights of the speech provided to the Post. “If that means we have to do a series of stop-gap measures, so be it. But that’s not the ideal. Let’s start solving the problem.”

The director of the Secret Service will be called before a Senate committee May 23 to provide details about the investigation into the Colombia prostitution scandal that has resulted in the dismissal of nine employees.

Director Mark Sullivan has not spoken publicly on the misconduct that took place last month in Cartagena, Colombia, where a dozen agents were implicated in a night of heavy carousing two days before President Obama arrived for an international summit.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, announced the hearing Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Charles K. Edwards, the acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, who is conducting an independent investigation, also will be called to testify, Lieberman said.