Carper casts lone vote in favor of Obama budget

WASHINGTON – Democratic Sen. Tom Carper said Wednesday he doesn’t support every single item in President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal 2016. But he’s still the only senator who voted for the proposal this week.

GOP Sen. John Cornyn forced Tuesday’s vote on the president’s spending plan to get Democrats on the record opposing it. Ninety-eight senators voted against the plan, with one lawmaker, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, not voting.

Cornyn offered the plan as an amendment to a GOP fiscal 2016 budget proposal being debated in Congress.

“I just thought as a matter of principle the president’s budget was head-over-heels above the alternative and somebody needed to vote for it and I was happy to do it,” Carper said in an interview.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee, said the budget plan in Cornyn’s amendment wasn’t the same as Obama’s proposal. He said the plan included in the amendment wouldn’t have raised the federal minimum wage and didn’t include two years of free community college, both elements of Obama’s proposal.

“I don’t know whose budget Sen. Cornyn is presenting, but it is certainly not the president’s budget,” Sanders said.

Cornyn said his amendment was the same as Obama’s proposal and said he was glad to hear Sanders planned to vote against it.

“I will vote no, and I encourage all senators to vote no,” Cornyn said.

Carper said he didn’t hear Sanders’ speech. He voted early and said he told the clerk, “If I’m the only one, I’m happy to vote for it, and we’ll just move on.”

The amendment may not have been identical to Obama’s budget, “but it was a very close facsimile,” Carper said.

Obama’s $4 trillion budget plan calls for increased domestic and military spending, financed in part by higher taxes on the wealthy. Carper said the plan would strengthen the economic recovery with large investments in transportation infrastructure, education and research and development.

Meanwhile, the GOP plan, which aims to balance the budget in 10 years with no tax increases, would pave the way for eliminating the Affordable Care Act while assuming all the revenue and savings earned by the law, Carper said.

Carper said he also opposes the idea of sparing the defense budget, but not the domestic discretionary budget, from across-the-board sequestration spending cuts.

Before Tuesday’s vote, Cornyn noted that the budgets proposed by Obama between 2011 and 2014 received only 2 votes in favor and 1,023 votes in opposition. But Carper said former President George W. Bush’s budgets also didn’t receive support from Republicans when Democrats offered them up for a vote.

Carper said his colleagues are “so reluctant or fearful” of voting for a massive budget package, knowing its most controversial items could be used against them in the next election.

“If somebody wants to do that, have at it,” he said of Cornyn’s amendment. “I just think… the president’s budget was markedly better than that offered by Republicans, so I voted for it.”

Contact Nicole Gaudiano at ngaudiano@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ngaudiano.