L AWRENCE J OURNAL -WORLD
NATION
X Saturday, April 16, 2011
| 9A.
House passes huge GOP budget cuts By Andrew Taylor Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — In a prelude to a summer showdown with President Barack Obama, Republicans controlling the House pushed to passage on Friday a bold but politically dangerous budget blueprint to slash social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid and fundamentally restructure Medicare health care for the elderly. The nonbinding plan lays out a fiscal vision cutting $6.2 trillion from yearly federal def icits over the coming decade and calls for transforming Medicare from a program in which the government directly pays medical bills into a voucher-like system that subsidizes purchases of private insurance plans. The GOP budget passed 235-193 with every Democrat voting “no.” Obama said in an Associated Press interview that it would “make Medicare into a voucher program. That’s something that we strongly object to.” The vote sets up the Republicans’ next round of confrontation with Obama and Democrats over mustpass legislation to allow the government to borrow more money to finance its operations and obligations to holders of U.S. bonds. For the first time, Obama acknowledged that raising the debt limit is “not going to happen without some spending cuts” insisted upon by Republicans and some Democrats.
‘No more kicking the can’ The vote came on the same day Obama signed a hardfought six-month spending bill that averted a government shutdown while cutting $38 billion from the government. Struck last week, the compromise was the first between the White House and the emboldened Republican majority in the House. Under the House Republican plan approved Friday, deficits requiring the federal government to borrow more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends would be cut by the end of the decade to 8 cents of borrowing for every dollar spent. “If the president won’t lead, we will,” Boehner said as he closed debate. “No more kicking the can down the road, no more whistling past the graveyard. Now is the time to address the serious challenges that face the American people and we will.” Obama saw the situation differently. In the AP interview, he said the Republicans’ “pessimistic vision ... says
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HOUSE MINORITY LEADER NANCY PELOSI, D-Calif., left, pauses amidst protesters during a news conference Friday on Capitol Hill in Washington. that America can no longer do some of the big things that made us great, that made us the envy of the world.” The plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, RWis., exposes Republicans to political risk. Its Medicare proposal would give people presently 54 or younger health insurance subsidies that would steadily lose value over time — even as current beneficiaries and people 55 and older would stay in the current system. The budget measure is nonbinding but lays out a vision to fundamentally reshape government benefit programs for the poor and elderly, programs whose spiraling costs threaten to crowd out other spending and produce a crippling debt burden that could put a major drag on the economy in the future. “Which future do you want your children to have? One where the debt gets so large it crushes the economy and gives them a diminished future?” Ryan asked. “Or this budget ... that literally not only gets us on the way to balancing the budget but pays off our debt?”
GOP attacks spending The GOP’s solution to unsustainable deficits is to relentlessly attack the spending side of the ledger while leaving Bush-era tax cuts intact. It calls for tax changes that would lower the top income tax rates for corporations and individuals by cleaning out a tax code cluttered with tax breaks and preferences, but it parts company with Obama and the f indings of a bipartisan deficit commission, which proposed devoting about
$100 billion a year in new revenue to easing the deficit. Democrats and many budget experts say this spending-cuts-only approach is fundamentally unbalanced, targeting social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while leaving in place a tax system they say bestows too many benefits on the wealthy. The GOP blueprint would cut almost $800 million from the federal-state Medicaid program — which provides health care to the poor and disabled and pays for nursing home care for millions of indigent senior citizens — into a block grant program run by the states. Republicans counter that low taxes and spending cuts would unleash capital into the economy and put it on firm footing — and avoid a European-style debt crisis that could force far harsher steps. “The Republican plan is not bold. It’s just the same old tired formula we’ve seen before of providing big tax breaks to the very wealthy and powerful special interests at the expense of the rest of America,” said top Budget panel Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. “Except this time it’s dressed up with a lot of sweet-smelling talk of reform.” In their budget, Republicans shied away from tackling Social Security shortfalls, steering clear of what pundits sometimes call the “third rail of American politics.” Virtually every budget expert in Washington agrees that projected Medicare cost increases are unsustainable, but the GOP initiative has brought heated disagreement.
Likely Republican contenders plot tea party strategies By Philip Elliott Associated Press Writer
BOSTON — It’s a tricky time of courtship. As the tea party turns 2, the still-gelling field of Republican presidential contenders is the first class of White House hopefuls to try to figure out how to tap the movement’s energy without alienating voters elsewhere on the political spectrum. Look no further than this weekend’s events marking the tea party’s second anniversary to see how the candidates are employing different strategies. Some will be out front as the tea party stages tax day rallies across the country. Others, not so much. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an establishment Republican making a play for tea party support and clamoring to be heard over bigger names, is among those jumping in with both feet. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is being more coy. Pawlenty joined a gathering on Boston Common — in the city where colonists staged the 1773 Tea Party revolt against the British government — and earlier in neighboring New Hampshire. And he’s headed for Iowa a day later for similar appearances that are likely to include “Don’t Tread on Me” banners and tirades against Washington spending.
Pawlenty led a crowd here in chanting “Yes, he did!” — a negative take on Obama’s “Yes, we can!” campaign slogan — as he listed what he called Obama’s broken promises to halve the federal deficit, contain health care costs with GOP aid and prevent 8 percent unemployment. “Thank you for being modern-day Paul Reveres, sounding the alarm and being the patriots who are going to lead the effort to take back our country,” he said, echoing an earlier appearance in Concord. For his part, Obama said he welcomed the activists’ work to “force some questions to the surface about who we are as a people, and what can we afford and what kind of government do we want.” “Obviously I have very different views than many in the tea party and certainly they would say they have very different views from me in terms of the proper role of government in our society,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press, “but my general view is that the more engaged the American people are, the more focused they are, then the better off our democracy will be over the long term.” Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, perhaps the Republican most closely identified with the tea party, is slated to attend a weekend tea party
rally at the Wisconsin Capitol, the site of recent protests over legislation that would strip union rights for most public workers. Tea party darling Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, all but drafted into the race by tea partyers, plans to share the steps of the South Carolina Statehouse with another of the movement’s favorite daughters, Gov. Nikki Haley. And little-known businessman Herman Cain, who is hoping tea party backing can make him more than a longshot, planned to hit rallies in New Hampshire, Iowa, Michigan and Texas. “A sleeping giant — we the people — has awakened, and it’s not going back to sleep,” Cain said. “We the people are still in charge of this country, no matter what you decide to call us.” Real estate magnate Donald Trump, who says he’s serious about running, picked a tea party rally in Boca Raton, Fla., to make his stand. And former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told a crowd on the New Hampshire Statehouse’s lawn that the 2012 election is a choice between the nation’s founding fathers or Obama. “Are we a country that is again going to believe in ourselves, in free people, in limited government, so we can transform the world and leave our country better than we found it?”
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