CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 9, 2012 – 11:13 p.m.
House GOP Sets Out Budget Revisions
By Paul M. Krawzak, CQ Staff
House Republicans are set to push through a plan Thursday to replace almost $100 billion in automatic spending cuts with a reconciliation bill that would pare more than $310 billion over a decade from mandatory spending, including Medicaid and programs for the poor.
A companion to the budget the House adopted in March, the measure to avoid the automatic spending “sequester” that would hit early next year is unlikely to gain any traction in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But for the GOP, the plan will serve as an outline of the kind of cuts that Republicans would make to replace the sequester and as a campaign document illustrating how they would try to control the growing, $15-trillion-plus debt heading into the election.
The House Rules Committee approved a closed rule for consideration of the bill (
In the Senate, majority Democrats dismissed the House plan as an unbalanced proposal that favors the rich at the expense of the poor. Majority Leader
GOP conservatives also have grumbled about the proposal, some because it does not touch defense and others because it simply is unlikely to become law.
“It’s a façade,” said freshman
The vast majority of House Republicans appeared to back the measure, which a GOP leadership aide said is expected to pass without much Republican opposition.
House Budget Chairman
“In our view, we shouldn’t be taking more from hardworking Americans to fix Washington’s mistakes,” Ryan said. “These savings will replace the arbitrary sequester cuts and lay the groundwork for further efforts to avert the spending-driven economic crisis before us.”
“We keep hearing from our Republican colleagues that we don’t have an alternative,” he said Wednesday. “Well, we’ve got an alternative that meets the priorities of the American people.”
The GOP legislation would repeal $98 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending that are scheduled to fall on Jan. 2 and replace them with a combination of discretionary and mandatory reductions.
Plan Details
House GOP Sets Out Budget Revisions
In addition to cutting discretionary spending by $19 billion next year, the bill calls for cuts to mandatory programs through a process it calls reconciliation, which would save $310 billion over a decade if the legislation were enacted Oct. 1 and $315 billion if it took effect earlier, on July 1.
The proposed mandatory savings include $83.3 billion from requiring federal workers and members of Congress to contribute more to their defined benefit pensions; $48.6 billion from capping damages and limiting attorney fees in medical malpractice lawsuits; and $35.8 billion from tightening eligibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Agriculture Program, formerly called food stamps, and scaling back benefits to pre-2009 levels.
Under the terms of last August’s debt limit deal, $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts over nine years was set to begin next January unless a deficit-cutting panel was able to find an alternative deficit reduction deal.
That bipartisan committee could not reach agreement, so the spending cuts are set to go forward, just as the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire Jan. 1, 2013.
Several GOP conservatives expressed dissatisfaction with the plan during a meeting with reporters Wednesday.
“I’m not terribly happy with it, [but] I’ll vote for it because I always vote for anything that reduces spending,” said Raúl R. Labrador, R-Idaho. “But I think we’re losing moral authority as Republicans if we say that there’s something that’s not on the table,” he said, pointing to the protections for Pentagon spending.
Labrador is among a group of conservative Republican freshmen in the House, including
But another prominent conservative,
The measure seemed unlikely to gain much, if any, Democratic support.
But he said his “sense” is that Republicans did not seek Democratic input in writing the bill. “I tend to like bipartisan things,” he said. “It shows that some work has gone into it.”
Joseph J. Schatz contributed to this story.