Posted on 11/17/2005 9:22:11 AM PST by Reagan Man
House Republican leaders on Thursday eased their planned cuts to health and nutrition programs for the poor, seeking votes from reluctant moderates for a contentious $50 billion budget-cutting bill.
Even with the modest changes, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., wouldn't guarantee that the budget plan would come to a vote later in the day.
"We'll see," said Hastert, who has spent the past two weeks cajoling rank and file Republicans to support a bill that Democrats are expected to unanimously oppose.
The latest concession to moderates involved leaving alone copayments for the poorest Medicaid beneficiaries and dropping a provision that would have denied free school lunches to about 40,000 children whose parents would lose their food stamps.
A provision denying Medicaid nursing home benefits to people with home equity of $500,000 would be modified by raising the cap to $750,000.
Those changes came on top of concessions made last week. Then, GOP leaders dropped plans to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling and to allow states to lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
The maneuvering came as House Republicans worked on two tracks to curb federal spending. Besides the five year, $50 billion deficit-reduction bill curbing spending on Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies, another vote loomed on a bill cutting money below last year's levels for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.
The deficit reduction bill would trim about $50 billion over five years from programs like Medicaid whose budgets increase automatically every year. The proposed savings are modest considering the $14 trillion the government is set to spend during the five-year period.
Still, the budget bill has run into fierce resistance from Republicans unhappy with limiting eligibility for food stamps, curbing student loan subsidies and requiring Medicaid beneficiaries to pay for a fraction of their health care.
Hastert has been working hard to salvage the budget planning, hoping to avoid a repeat of last week's embarrassing setback, when GOP leaders were forced to scrap plans for a vote after a revolt by moderates.
"There is no question we are having a difficult time rounding up the votes," said GOP Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, chairman of the House Budget Committee.
As Nussle and other GOP leaders have struggled to find the final mix of spending cuts for the deficit-reduction plan, the chamber's powerful appropriators have made steady progress in their goal of passing 11 separate spending bills for the budget year that began Oct. 1.
Though they've blown the Oct. 1 deadline, as is the case most years, the appropriators have managed to avoid producing another embarrassing, hastily assembled omnibus bill, a win for freshman Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
And Lewis has defied convention by winning passage of bills that, taken as a whole, freeze the budgets for most domestic agencies except the Homeland Security Department.
Still, stopgap funds will be needed to keep many agencies running past a Friday deadline.
And while all of the domestic spending bills should be cleared before Thanksgiving, the defense spending bill is on hold until next month, to the embarrassment of GOP leaders.
The Pentagon worries that further delays in defense spending boosts could harm some operations.
The vote on the labor, health and education bill won't be easy, especially since about $1 billion worth of lawmakers' cherished hometown projects and grants _ commonly called "earmarks" _ were dropped from the bill to avoid more severe budgets for heating subsidies, the Centers for Disease Control and the Head Start preschool education program, among others.
"Had the $1 billion been spent on earmarks, we would have sustained intolerable cuts," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., lead Senate negotiator on the spending bill.
The separate budget cut plan is the first effort in eight years to take on the automatic growth of mandatory programs like Medicaid, which make up about 55 percent of the budget. By comparison, the annual appropriations bills fund about one-third of the budget.
Wait a minute....MEDICAID payments for nursing home patients who have homes with $500,000 equity is in there???
What the heck??? Then they raised it to $750,000 as an "compromise"????????
Okay folks, what is wrong with THIS picture?
Ooh, a little spine and principle?
They'll get over it.
Dan
Lets cut the Northeast Dairy pact or what every it is called, See how Bass of NH likes it.
My guess is because the value of homes are going up
Think big--Cut every federal dollar going to NH.
I guess I am ignorant then, because I thought Medicaid was for people that couldn't afford health care or health insurance...
Anyone that has a home with $500,000 equity should NOT need financial help...IMHO
It is
Anyone that has a home with $500,000 equity should NOT need financial help...IMHO
Just because a person has a home valued at 500,000 doesn't mean they are financially well off
For example .. My parents purchased their home in the mid 50's for $13,000 ... years later my father died of cancer and my mother had to raise their 7 kids by herself ...she didn't sell the home because the mortgage payments were cheaper then renting a 2 bedroom apartment for her and 7 kids .. Though that didn't stop many people thinking my mother rec'd a HUGE insurance claim after dad passed away.
Trust me .. we didn't have any money .. just a roof over our heads and cloths on our backs
Fast forward to the year 2000 .. mom is diagnosed with Alzheimer's ... and is still far from being financially well off .. though now the value of her home is valued at 300K
Since my family is from the generation that take care of their own .. we didn't put her in a nursing home and took turns taking care of her ourselves .. we didn't have to look to the government for help .. though she did rec'd help from Medicaid with regards to doctors
But other families do ..
But I will say ... a trick that many will do is .. put the house in the name of a child or family relative .. so the parent/family member doesn't have this asset to claim
Gosh...your life sounds remarkably like mine...My mother died last January in an assisted living center...we were in the process of selling her house to help pay for it...
but, she died just a few days after being put in the assisted living center.
Her house had been paid for, for years...my dad bought it for 18.000 in 1970....we sold it last summer for $200,000.
It is so funny to watch the House...they have the dems complaining about the deficit, and also complaining about cutting funds for anything at all...
Also, you have Murtha up complaining about how much the war is costing, but Bush insists on continuing the tax cuts, instead of asking Americans to "sacrifice" like Presidents used to do in times of war....but, then he went on to complain about the cost of gas!!!!
They are so confused.....LOL
He should take his own advice and stop spending money on pork projects
Steny Hoyer was just up on the floor complaining about Bush' "failed economy"...and another house member said that "the best is behind us, not before us"...
While listening to this...I wondered if Hoyer would rather have the economy of his friend Jimmah Carter...with HIGH interest rates, gas lines out that kazoo...no Christmas lights...
Also....they are mentioning No Child Left Behind..and other programs that Bush signed on for...but now wants to "cheat"...which make me realize these people really have forgotten a little thing like....9/11.
Well ... since Carter got blown away in his reelection
I'm guess that the answer would be yes
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Those aren't Republicans. They are democrats in drag
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