WASHINGTON – It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the budget deal.
“Embrace the suck,” House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats Thursday morning, a source told Politico.
“We need to get this off the table so we can go forward,” she added. It’s a way of telling her colleagues the budget deal negotiated with Republicans is the best they can get.
Democrats are fuming that the bipartisan budget deal doesn’t extend unemployment benefits for more than a million Americans.
One of Pelosi’s top lieutenants, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Thursday it was “too early to say” whether most Democrats would back the deal, in an appearance on the Bill Press show.
To pass the House, it will need to get a bipartisan majority of votes.
The deal, negotiated by conservative House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) puts off most of the looming “sequester” budget cuts.
It shaves about $23 billion from the deficit, but provides for $85 billion in new spending over a decade, funded through cost savings and fees slapped on air travel and Medicare providers.
A group of conservative groups is blasting the deal for blowing through spending limits, and numerous Senate conservatives have come out against it.
House Speaker John Boehner laced into conservative groups for a second day in a row Thursday.
“I think they’re pushing our members in places where they don’t want to be, and frankly I just think that they’ve lost all credibility,” Boehner fumed.
The House is set to vote on the budget Thursday.
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