CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 25, 2011 – 9:51 p.m.
Senate GOP Stands Behind Budget
By Paul M. Krawzak, CQ Staff
Most Senate Republicans are backing their House colleagues’ plan for major changes in entitlement programs, shrugging off Democratic attacks as debt reduction talks with the White House intensify.
The Senate GOP endorsement of the House fiscal 2012 budget plan (
Biden and House Majority Leader
Senate votes on the House plan and several other budget proposals came against the backdrop of the May 24 Democratic upset in a House special election in New York’s 26th district, a traditional Republican stronghold. Democrats cast Erie County Clerk Kathy Hochul’s victory over State Assemblywoman Jane Corwin as a referendum on the House Medicare plan, which would curb the growing cost of Medicare by turning it into a voucher-like program starting in 2022.
Congressional Republicans such as Sen.
Motion to Proceed
Senate Majority Leader
The fiscal tax and spending blueprint by House Budget Chairman
Republicans
The Senate defeated three other motions to consider budget plans, including the fiscal 2012 budget proposal that President Obama submitted in February, which was voted down 0-97. Bids to consider GOP budget proposals offered by Paul and
Issue for Democrats
Democrats have been pounding the GOP daily over the House Medicare proposal.
In a floor speech before the votes, Senate Budget Chairman
Senate GOP Stands Behind Budget
“The reason we have not seen a budget from Chairman Conrad and the Democrat Senate is because they know that they can’t put forward a plan that wins the support both of their caucus and of the American people,” he said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the Social Security trustees issued a report saying the long-term costs of Medicare “are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing.”
But Senate GOP support for the House budget resolution does not dispel the concern that many Republicans have about the political consequences of touching entitlement programs, often called the third rail of politics.
As a caveat to their support, many Republicans say they do not necessarily agree with all the details of the Ryan Medicare plan, and instead see it as the beginning, rather than the end, of the debate.
“The Medicare reform that Democrats have attacked so, is not in the 10-year budget,” Sessions said, referring to the fact that the Medicare changes reflected in the House budget would not take effect until 2022. “It’s really more of a vision for how to reform Medicare that Congressman Ryan has worked on and, I think, has much merit.”