Posted on 03/17/2005 12:23:49 PM PST by Cagey
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted Thursday to strip all proposed Medicaid cuts from the $2.6 trillion budget for next year, killing the heart of the plan's deficit reduction and dealing an embarrassing setback to President Bush and Republican leaders.
The amendment, whose chief sponsor was moderate Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., was approved 52-48 after days of heavy lobbying by both sides. It was widely seen as a test of the GOP-run Congress' taste for making even moderate reductions in popular benefit programs that consume two-thirds of the budget and are growing rapidly, even at a time of record federal deficits.
The Medicaid cuts could still be revived when the House and Senate try writing a compromise budget next month. The more conservative House was voting Thursday on a similar budget that would make way for up to $20 billion in Medicaid savings.
The budget sets overall tax and spending targets to guide Congress as it writes bills later in the year that make actual changes in programs and tax laws.
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By their vote, senators deleted the $14 billion in five-year reductions that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., included in his fiscal outline.
That would be a 1 percent reduction from the $1.12 trillion the federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled is expected to spend in federal funds during that period. Instead, a commission would be appointed to study the program for a year.
"This one cries for the most care" in making a decision, said Smith, whose amendment was co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. "Because it involves the halt, the lame, the poor, the blind, the needy, those who have no recourse."
Gregg called claims that Medicaid cuts would hurt people "absurd, misleading" and "just scare tactics."
With elections next year, Gregg predicted the vote meant there would be no serious effort to squeeze savings from benefit programs for many years. And he launched what seemed almost like a personal criticism at Smith for an amendment he said would "gut the only thing in this budget" that would force fiscal discipline.
"And it's being done by Republicans," Gregg said. "You just have to ask yourself, how they get up in the morning and look in the mirror?"
Joining Smith were all 44 Democrats, independent James Jefforts of Vermont and GOP Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Following Bush's lead, the Senate Republicans made the proposed Medicaid reductions the keystone of their plan to save $32 billion from benefit programs over the next five years. Overall, such programs are the biggest and fastest growing part of the budget, and Republicans have targeted them in an effort to slowly reduce record federal deficits.
The showdown occurred as the House and Senate moved toward completing similar $2.6 trillion budgets for 2006.
House GOP leaders cleared the last hurdle to final passage by striking a deal with conservatives to allow procedural votes on whether to kill spending bills that exceed budget limits.
Generally following the approach Bush charted in his budget last month, both chambers' fiscal outlines would cut a wide range of domestic programs in an effort to reduce slowly deficits that soared to a record $412 billion last year. Defense and domestic anti-terrorism programs would get increased funds.
In addition, Bush wants five-year tax cuts totaling $100 billion. The House budget makes room for $106 billion in tax cuts, the more moderate Senate $70 billion.
By 50-50 - a vote shy of the majority needed - Democrats and moderate Republicans narrowly lost an effort Wednesday to require any new tax cuts be paid for with revenue increases or spending reductions. Though GOP leaders prevailed in defending one of Bush's top priorities, the vote showed how tenuous Senate support is for a fresh round of tax cuts.
For the first time since 1997, the House and Senate both want to carve savings out of benefit programs, which consume nearly two-thirds of the federal budget and are growing rapidly. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest, but neither Social Security or Medicare are on the chopping block this year.
Overall, these programs are projected to spend $7.7 trillion over the next five years. By law, they pay benefits to anyone who qualifies and cover inflation and growing numbers of recipients, so their spending increases automatically every year.
Bush proposed saving $51 billion from benefit programs over the next five years, including from Medicaid, farm aid, student loans and fees on employers to support the fiscally ailing federal agency that backs private pension plans. The House budget calls for $69 billion in savings, the Senate's $32 billion.
The Republicans have moved left.
And the left. Well. What can one say. They've moved into the outer hemisphere. They've left socialism in the dust.
Well now the media and the Demonrats (same difference) can stop blaming Bush for deficits and see who the real culprits are, both Demonrats and so-called Republicans in the Congress who think you can control deficits while allowing entitlement spending to spiral out of control. Well Bush is forever inocculated against the claim he is to blame for all the deficits. We now see who the real culprits are. Bush tried and the Congress balked. It's their deficit now.
"Some neoconservatives these days argue big government is OK so long as it is conservative big government representing values in which they believe. Big government is not OK. Every inch the government grows, the same inch is taken from the liberties of the people, starting with the basic liberty of spending your own money the way you choose rather than the way the government chooses to spend it for you. Massive programs inevitably have unintended consequences; government, though necessary for many purposes, is no more a precision instrument for constructive social change than a sledgehammer is for brain surgery."
--Jay Ambrose
Afraid of the granny vote.
Brave Sir Robin and his merry band of republican spending addicts do it again.
None of them will be happy till we are all destitute and ALL on the dole. They are bound to turn the US into Europe at all costs. As it is, I can hardly afford to work.
Damn. Six RINOs can ruin your day.
>The Medicaid cuts could still be revived when the House and Senate try writing a compromise budget next month. The more conservative House was voting Thursday on a similar budget that would make way for up to $20 billion in Medicaid savings.<
It's not necessarily over yet.
I've contacted the RNC to air my grievances and all I've received in return are more phone calls asking for money. The Republican Party will not receive one red cent of my modest budget until they fire Davidson and support smaller government with less spending.
Until then, my political donations go directly to candidates that I can support in good conscience.
The GOP has been playing 7-card-fold'em way too long...
The only good thing you can say about these votes is that it will take Bush off the hook for being the big spender..
I just hope he has the guts to veto any of these programs that they have voted more money to---
Now is the time for a line item veto also--
It isn't the granny's that are on medicaid, I know I do medical billing and the most and highest bills are neonatal,
200K to a mil in costs for a preemie. Unwed mothers are on medicaid and accounts for about 75% the rest is between the illegals and the disabled.
It doesn't get him totally off the hook, he is spending big in other areas.
When RINOs attack . . .
This is good news.
Every time the RATS start talking about deficits he can say to the camera that once again the RATS killed a deficit reduction bill so that they can continue their social spending ways.
Strategery I tell you!!!
This was a one-percent proposed cut and our gutless RINOS flinched from it. President Bush tried to make a symbolic cut and not even that can get through the Senate. Not much hope for good judges or S.S. reform, despite a majority of Senate seats, Ugh!
On the military and the war, sure....
He had submitted a budget with cuts--where else are you talking about?
What would happen if the first two were means-tested the way Medicaid is? Would that save any money?
Sen. Gordon Smith was elected as a good conservative Republican. But, he feels that to keep his office he has to pander to the Rats in the valley. Hence, his 180 turnaround on gay marriage, abortion, and fiscal responsibility. I phoned his office and told the perky lady that if I had intended for a Rat to have that office I would have voted for one!!
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