A budget plan containing familiar proposals to cut across a wide swath of the federal budget breezed through the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, but its sharp cuts to health care coverage for the middle class and the poor, food stamps and popular domestic programs are a nonstarter with President Barack Obama.
The GOP-controlled committee approved the plan by a party-line vote after swatting away numerous Democratic attempts to ease its cuts.
The plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the committee chairman and the party’s former vice presidential nominee, promises $5.1 trillion in cuts over the coming decade to bring the government’s ledger into the black by 2024.
The plan will not get past the Democratic-controlled Senate and Obama, but gives Republicans a vehicle to polish their budget-cutting credentials in the run-up to fall midterm elections in which they’re counting on a big turnout from GOP conservatives and the tea party.
Ryan’s plan promises to wrestle the government’s chronic deficits under control after a decade, relying on deep cuts to Medicaid, highway construction, federal employee pension benefits, food and heating aid to the poor, and Pell Grants for college students from low-income families. It would eliminate health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act while assuming the government keeps $1 trillion worth of Obamacare’s tax increases, and retains a 10-year, $700 billion cut to Medicare that Democrats drove through in 2010 when passing the health care law.
Republicans say such tough cuts are required to take on chronic deficits that threaten to sap the economy of its strength in coming years as government borrowing squeezes out savings and investment and spiraling costs of federal retirement and health care programs promise to swamp taxpayers.
Ryan cited Congressional Budget Office studies that show curbing deficits and debt would lead to a healthier economy in the long term.
“Just as a weak economy can drag the budget into the red, a responsible budget can help propel the economy forward,” Ryan said. “If Washington is serious about helping working families — or serious about getting families out of work back to work — then it needs to get serious about the national debt.”
But Democrats cast Ryan’s plan as an all-out assault on the poor and working class. They say that more than $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid over 10 years would force hundreds of thousands of seniors from nursing home care, for instance, while $135 billion cut from food stamps and other nutrition aid would increase hunger.
Under Congress’ arcane budgeting rules, the annual budget resolution is a non-binding blueprint that tries to set broad goals for follow-up legislation on taxes, agency spending and curbs on the growth of expensive benefit programs such as Medicare, whose budgets go up every year as if on autopilot.
As such, the annual budget debate allows GOP lawmakers to go on record in favor of spending cuts big and small — whether it’s slashing Medicaid, cutting subsidies for farmers and Amtrak, or further cuts to domestic agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration — without having to follow through with binding legislation.
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