Posted on 12/05/2005 12:22:31 PM PST by NormalGuy
Republican leaders in Congress hope to complete a bill to curb the growth of student loans, Medicaid and other benefit programs before Christmas, though they might delay extending tax cuts until next year. Staff aides and lobbyists are skeptical about the prospects of finishing work in the next few weeks on five-year spending cuts of up to $50 billion.
But failure to deliver would disappoint GOP loyalists eager to see their party burnish its budget-cutting credentials, It also would push the contentious issue into January or February, muddying next year's agenda.
The House will return Tuesday for a scheduled two-week session; senators will not come back until next week.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., say they are "deeply committed to restraining spending" and hope to finish the cuts before Christmas.
The chances for completing an accompanying tax-cut bill is more doubtful as Congress wraps up a fall agenda complicated by Hurricane Katrina.
"On the spending side, I believe we will finish," Frist said. "I cannot predict on the tax side."
The centerpiece is the budget-cut bill, the first attempt in eight years to check the growth of Medicaid and other benefit programs. Their costs rise automatically each year to reflect inflation and population growth, unless Congress reduces them.
The House and Senate have approved separate budget bills that take divergent approaches:
The House would trim spending by $50 billion over five years, compared with almost $35 billion in the Senate's version.
The Senate would use those savings for such programs as college aid and maintaining physician reimbursements under Medicare. The House measure contains far less spending.
The Senate voted to go ahead with drilling for oil in a wildlife refuge in Alaska. GOP leaders in the House were forced to scuttle that idea to win budget approval. Powerful senators such as Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., insist that a final compromise bill include the drilling measure.
"Because these bills are so fundamentally different, the next two weeks will look a lot like a two-minute drill in football," said Jack Howard, a GOP lobbyist and veteran of Capitol Hill and the Bush White House. "They're going to have to drive the length of the field, and a lot of things are going to have to happen very fast," he said.
Added Tom Kahn, Democratic staff director for the House Budget Committee: "I think they're going to have one heck of a time getting this thing done by the end of the year, and I would be surprised if they could do it - very surprised. There's just too many difficult and controversial issues."
As negotiations continue between the House and Senate on the spending cuts, House GOP leaders will press ahead to garner support for a bill to preserve the tax cuts won by President Bush, but which are set to expire unless lawmakers extend them.
Last month, the leaders put off an attempt to pass the tax bill because of resistance from lawmakers who were reluctant to vote for the cuts so quickly after approving reduced spending for Medicaid, food stamps and other programs aimed at the poor.
The GOP tax bill would extend the reduced tax rates for capital gains and dividends. A companion Senate plan that passed with bipartisan support does not include those provisions; it would provide middle-income wage-earners relief from the alternative minimum tax.
That tax, designed to prevent the wealthy from avoiding taxes, now falls on an increasing number of middle-income families.
How is a cut in the rate of increase savings?
It's political doublespeak for bend over.
A Congressman is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
What a gaggle of liars these RepublicRATs are.
I'm still trying to figure out how spending the savings on other programs can be counted as "savings" rather than "re-allocation".
Hey dear, I've decided we need to save money this year, so I cut your clothing budget by $1000. In a related move, I've decided to use those savings to increase the budget for "audio-visual services".
In abstract, I'm not upset we don't vote on extending the tax cuts this year. They don't expire for a few years. I know that it is better for long-term planning to know they won't expire, but maybe doing tax cuts right before the election would be a GOOD thing to get people re-elected.
I think too many republicans see tax cuts as a vote-losing proposition, and are therefore afraid to cut taxes in an election year. In fact, if they really think that tax cuts DO hurt necessary government services, they shouldn't cut them at all, and if they DO think tax cuts are good, they should be willing to enact them and defend them in an election year.
I think that going into the next election with the tax cuts still hanging out because the democrats are blocking them would help us retain and pick up seats, as people begin to realist the problems if the tax cuts expire, leading to huge tax increases and associated slowdown in the economic growth.
IMO, RINO's in both the House and Senate got together and agreed to split obstruction of these measures between them, rather then one bearing the full brunt of ire.
At any rate, if they have time to call baseball and oil execs to grnadtsnad they have time to --
1) Get tax cuts
2) Cut spending growth
3 Pass Patriot Act
4) Pass ANWR
5) See to Judges
Otherwise don't even bother coming back to D.C. I'd rather they all stayed out of town.
I didn't notice any talk of going back to rip out the pork that Stevens and others put in an earlier bill.
The Department of Education's total budget for 2006 is $69.4B. There; I just saved 40% more in a year than the Republican "leaders" are trying to save in five, and I hardly had to try.
When is a cut not a cut? When a politician says it's one.
"How is a cut in the rate of increase savings?"
The same way that a "cut" in these high-profile programs which impact the middle class is intended to scare those voters into approving eventual tax hikes. It's the equivalent of state government cutting schools and library hours, all the stuff that really serves the public, before cutting dead weight lib programs, to make it seem that government has cut to the bone and needs more money.
This kind of move by a GOP-controlled Congress makes it obvious that the GOP in DC has finally come entirely out of the closet--it is dead set against conservative governance. Give to Club for Growth, give not one cent to the RNC.
Here is a compromise: We'll cut taxes AND spending.
These parasites have expanded the federal government by 700 billion dollars a year. But cutting 10 billion dollars off those increases, or a 1.4% reduction in the increase, is too much to ask. Sick.
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