Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

House Republicans Propose $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Decade

Published: April 3, 2011

WASHINGTON — House Republicans plan this week to propose more than $4 trillion in federal spending reductions over the next decade by reshaping popular programs like Medicare, the Budget Committee chairman said Sunday in opening a new front in the intensifying budget wars.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” the chairman, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, also said Republicans would call for strict caps on all government spending that would require cuts to take effect whenever Congress exceeded those limits.

“We are going to put out a plan that gets our debt on a downward trajectory and gets us to a point of giving our next generation a debt-free nation,” Mr. Ryan said, even as he predicted that the politically charged initiatives he intended to lay out in the 2012 budget beginning Tuesday would give Democrats a “political weapon to go against us.”

“But they will have to lie and demagogue to make that a political weapon,” he said.

Republicans and Democrats remained divided over how to reach an agreement that would avert a government shutdown, which could come as early as Saturday, when a budget bill now financing the government is set to expire.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chamber’s No. 3 Democrat, said progress was being made, but neither he nor other top lawmakers could guarantee that government agencies would be able to stay open after Friday.

Mr. Schumer said Democrats were urging Republicans to consider reducing some of the automatic annual spending in Agriculture, Treasury and Justice Department programs to reach a target of about $33 billion in cuts rather than insisting that it all come out of what is known in budget parlance as discretionary accounts.

A Democrat involved in the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said alternative spending cuts from the White House and Senate Democrats would range up to $8 billion. But to the Democrats’ dismay, not only were Republicans resisting those cuts, they were also proposing more spending than the Pentagon wants for military and homeland security programs.

“If you just cut from domestic discretionary, you’ll have to cut things like helping students go to college; you’ll have to cut scientific research, including cancer research,” Mr. Schumer said on the ABC News program “This Week.” “These things have created millions of jobs through the years.”

Another potential source of savings being considered by the Democrats is the $3 billion in unspent transportation funds. Republicans have resisted including such reductions as a central element of the spending cuts package, calling them an accounting gimmick.

“We want real spending cuts,” Speaker John A. Boehner told reporters on Friday. “We are dealing with the discretionary part of the budget.”

Despite continued jockeying in public, some lawmakers suggested a shutdown could be avoided, given that both parties have said they do not want government services to be interrupted.

“I think we’ll get together,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid, appearing on the same program, seemed to draw a line against Republican attempts to cut programs like Planned Parenthood or education initiatives for young children.

“It’s a question of how we do it,” Mr. Reid said. “We can’t do it on Head Start. We can’t do it at the program for little kids. We can’t do it on homeless veterans.”

While the fight over a plan to finance the government through Sept. 30 could have immediate consequences, the conflict over the emerging Republican budget proposal for next year suggested a continued partisan clash over fundamental questions of how the federal government delivers services.

Recognizing the political risk of significant changes in Medicare and Medicaid, the health care program for poor Americans, Mr. Ryan emphasized that such spending would continue to rise under the Republican budget plan, just not as sharply as it would have otherwise.

He also sought to clarify that any Medicare changes, which would include requiring more affluent Americans to pay a larger share of their Medicare costs, would not amount to a voucher program — an approach that has been heavily criticized by Democrats.

Mr. Ryan said his plan was more like the Medicare prescription drug program and would allow patients to pick from a menu of insurance plans. The federal government would direct the subsidy to the plan, not to the consumer.

“It doesn’t go to the person, into the marketplace,” Mr. Ryan said. “It goes to the plan. More for the poor, more for people who get sick, and we don’t give as much money to people who are wealthy.”

Americans who are now 55 or older would go into the current program to prevent a sudden change in their health insurance coverage, he said.

Democrats quickly took aim at Mr. Ryan’s proposals, saying he was trying to shrink the deficit at the expense of people who need government aid rather than the wealthy business interests allied with Republicans.

“Paul Ryan made clear that the Republican budget will protect big oil companies’ subsidies over seniors’ health care,” said Jesse Ferguson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It’s already becoming clear who will be the priority in the House Republican budget — special interests, not middle-class families.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/us/politics/04spend.html?_r=1&hpw