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Subscribe to RSSRepublicans are ready to ram through the House an election-year, $3.5 trillion budget that showcases their deficit-cutting plan for revamping Medicare and slicing everything from food stamps to transportation while rejecting President Barack Obama's call to raise taxes on the rich.
The blueprint by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was headed for all but certain House passage Thursday, mostly along party lines. It faces a demise that is just as sure in the Democratic-run Senate, which plans to ignore it, but the battle remains significant because of the clarity with which it contrasts the two parties' budgetary visions for voters.
Republicans were focused on sharper deficit reduction and starkly less government than Democrats wanted and were proposing to lower income tax rates while erasing many unspecified tax breaks. Obama and Democrats were ready to boost taxes on families making above $250,000 and on oil and gas companies, add spending for roads and schools and cull more modest savings from domestic programs.
"They're choosing the next election over the next generation," Ryan said, deriding Democrats' plans as far too timid. He added, "If we don't tackle these fiscal problems soon, they're going to tackle us as a country."
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Democrats said they, too, were eager to stanch deficits that now exceed $1 trillion annually. But they said it needed to be done in a more balanced way, with rich and poor alike sharing the load.
"It's a path to greater prosperity — if you're already wealthy," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, top Democrat on the Budget panel, mocking the "Path to Prosperity" title Ryan has given his document. "Because our Republican colleagues refuse to ask millionaires to contribute one cent to deficit reduction, they hit everyone and everything else."
In a pair of preliminary votes expected Thursday, conservatives were offering their own proposal with deeper spending cuts and far faster deficit-reduction than the GOP plan, claiming to balance the budget in just five years. Democrats were pushing a measure featuring pumped-up spending for education and new tax credits for companies creating jobs and raising wages, while claiming savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, government waste and reductions in farm payments.
Both were destined to be defeated.
Underscoring the prickly partisan gulf over how to tackle the budget's drastic imbalances, the House late Wednesday on a 382-38 vote easily shot down a compromise, bipartisan deficit-cutting plan by moderates of both parties that mingled tax increases with spending cuts.
The measure was modeled roughly on a package produced by Obama's deficit-reduction commission. The commission's plan drew praise from prominent deficit foes but was treated coolly by Obama and congressional leaders of both parties.
The House also voted 414-0 Wednesday to reject Obama's budget, with Democrats accusing the GOP of forcing the vote to embarrass them. Democrats were concerned Republicans would use campaign ads to link Democrats who supported Obama's plan to all of its details, including tax increases and boosts for unpopular programs.
Congress' budget is a nonbinding road map that suggests tax and spending changes that lawmakers should make in separate, later legislation.
Particularly with voters deciding control of the White House and the Capitol in November, the two parties are sure to stalemate each other's budgetary priorities until after the election.
The House GOP budget would cut spending by $5.3 trillion more over the next decade than Obama's would — out of more than $40 trillion that would still be spent during that period. It envisions repeal of the president's health care overhaul and sets a course for deep reductions for highway and rail projects, research and aid to college students and farmers while easing planned defense cuts.
It also would cut taxes by $2 trillion more than the president over that time, leaving Republicans seeking about $3.3 trillion in deeper deficit reduction than Obama.
Drawing the most political heat was Ryan's plan for Medicare, the $500 billion-a-year health insurance program for older Americans that all agree is growing so fast that its future financing is shaky. Both parties know that seniors vote in high numbers and care passionately about the program.
Republicans would leave the plan alone for retirees and those near retirement, letting the government continue paying much of their doctors' and hospital bills.
For younger people, Medicare would be reshaped into a voucher-like system in which the government would subsidize people's health care costs, which Republicans say would drive down federal costs by giving seniors a menu of options that would compete with each other. Democrats say government payments won't keep up with the rapid inflation of medical costs, leaving many beneficiaries struggling to afford the care they need.
"It ends the Medicare guarantee," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Ryan's budget.
"This plan doesn't end the Medicare guarantee," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. "Arithmetic does. Unless we change something, unless we put it on a solvent footing, the Medicare guarantee is gone."
Republicans would turn Medicaid, the nearly $300 billion-a-year federal-state health insurance program for the poor, into a grant that states could use as they wish. They also would trim its growth by $800 billion over the next decade.
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Republicans are very very concerned about the debt we will leave our children. But when it comes to the water they will drink, food they will eat and air they will breath. . . .not so much.
They're not that concerned about the children... kids of government officials have it pretty good and it's bootstraps and personal responsibility for everyone else.
"Republicans would turn Medicaid, the nearly $300 billion-a-year federal-state health insurance program for the poor, into a grant that states could use as they wish. They also would trim its growth by $800 billion over the next decade."
The poor take a bullet paid for by tax cuts for the rich. Don't the Republicans realize how they look? I forgot. The Republicans in congress will be receiving the tax cuts.
They just might no longer be in Congress. One can only hope.
You forgot to mention the $500 billion dems already stole from medicade to fund obamacare. At least the repubs will do over 10 years where the dems did it NOW.
sonmanvb,
You might want to stop parroting Bachmann you are embarrassing yourself.
"Bachmann said that, "We know that President Obama stole over $500 billion out of Medicare to switch it over to Obamacare." There is a small amount of truth in her statement in that future savings from Medicare are planned to offset new costs created by the law. But the law attempts to curtail the rapid growth of future Medicare spending, not cut current funding. Additionally, the money was not "stolen." Congress reduced spending on a program through its normal legislative process. That kind of rhetoric is deceptive, and it undermines Bachmann's basic point. We rate her statement Mostly False."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/12/michele-bachmann/did-president-obama-steal-500-billion-medicare/
Republicans have adopted a whole new world for themselves, and it comes with a new calendar. This is the year 4AB (After Bush). What happened pre-AB doesn't exist for them. Certainly any simpleminded person can appreciate the economic convenience for utilizing the AB Calender. There was no stock market collapse, no bank collapse, no job losses, and the debt problems all started on the first day of year 1AB!
A working American pays 25% income tax on income over 69 thousand/year, plus 8% payroll tax which comes to a 33% tax rate.
Mutt Money makes 21 million per year and pays 14.9%.
The rich oligarchy are crooked pricks that need to be taken down about 14 notches. They do nothing for their money and pay very little tax.
But you forgot to mention that Congress, both sides, made the tax loop holes people like Mitt R. and Harry Reid take advange of. If I could, I would to and so would you hypocrite.
sonmanvb,
The fact that Dems want to change that and Reps don't, make the Reps the hypocrites.
"ram through" - you mean like the health care bill? no, wait, nobody got a chance to read that 2700 page bill. but we all know what's in it now that we have passed it. thank you nancy.
how does not spending a certain amount of money and reducing taxes lower the deficit? Is it not better to cut spending with an increase in taxes.
Republicans - they want the lowest tax rate on the top 1% since Herbert Hoover, another Republican. That should tell you something. And that they took a budget that had been balanced for 4 years, in 2001, and turned it into massive deficits. Look at what a Republican government can do when it has complete control - Texas has massive deficits, one of the lowest standards of education in the country, a slush fund for our governor, and teacher layoffs. But we do have the $25 million per year needed to pay for F1 racing.
I think I finally get what our Republican lawmakers mean by "personal responsibility": Their responsibility is to make sure that they, personally, have as much money as possible.
When was the last time you looked at YOUR Dem lawmakers and how they get "rich"?
They all do it. It is up to us to stop it. But we never will as long as libtards are drinking the dems kool-aid and enjoy living on the Dem plantation of the new slave masters.
An important distinction is that the rich Democrats are fighting against their own selfish interests. Their ideas and proposals have them paying their fair share of taxes. Rich Republicans only fight to make the rich richer.
The rich oligarchy pricks say the working man cannot form unions but the rich can form their corporate unions and grant themselves low tax rates and special tax breaks.
The rich oligarchy needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
So their plan is to cut funding to education, medicare and infrastructure in order to protect millionaire and corporate welfare! I cannot believe people are still ignorant enough to vote for them!
They are. I guess they have no idea of spending a little now to save money in the long run, especially with infrastructure. Maybe they will wake up when some bridge they are crossing collapses.
Typical TOTAL UN-COOPERATION BY THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS, and they want the PRESIDENCY! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! And they wonder why this congress was declared the worst bipartisan congress ever!
We, the 99% American People are with you, President Obama! We know you have been trying to correct their 8 yrs. of corrupt corporate rule. DON'T GIVE UP! WE'RE BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY!!!
The rich oligarchy says they can form Hedge fund unions to manipulate our commodity markets but the working families cannot form unions to negotiate living incomes.
The rich oligarchy need to be taken down about 14 notches.
The rich oligarchy says it is unconstitutional to provide health care assistance to the working families but it is constitutional to steal private property, eves-drop on communications and spirit Americans away to foreign prisons.
The rich oligarchy needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
This piece below is probably either too truthful or too thick for most Republuthugs to understand:
College isn't for everyone, Santorum says. By itself, that statement isn't political. In fact, to many working-class Americans, it makes sense. You don't need four years of college if you're going to apprentice yourself as a plumber.
But when you flesh out the context - a wealthy candidate with an anti-college message speaking at a gathering paid for by billionaires with a long track record of union-busting - that statement takes on a sinister cast. Collective power is the only power available to many Americans without college degrees. What is this supposedly working-class candidate really saying?
Anti-intellectualism isn't just about paranoia. It has utility, too. In Russia, Germany and China, it was a rationale for imprisoning, murdering or disappearing intellectuals, artists and scholars, anyone who had the power to see beyond the ideology that thugs used to mask a lust for power.
In the US, anti-intellectualism is about politics as much as it is about capitalism, because an educated worker is dangerous to those who own the capital. With education, he becomes conscious of his exploitation and may seek out ways to empower himself and others though collective action.
But if you undermine the value of that education, if you make the worker believe he's a snob for wanting a college degree, if you persuade public opinion that collective action by workers is just the sort of thing a communist would do to destroy American values, you'd win the battle before it started.
Or as a Tea Party member told TPM: "Everybody can't be equal," he said. "Somebody needs to do the manual labour."
The late George Carlin once said there's a reason why American schools are in crisis. The ruling class doesn't want them to improve. "They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking... That's against their interests... You know what they want? They want obedient workers."
The rich oligarchy says their corporate unions deserve low tax rates and special deductions while the working Americans and small businesses must be prevented from being competition to the corporate unions.
The rich oligarchy must be taken down about 14 notches.
I disagree. They should be taken all the way down and removed from office and we put in a new class of reps in washington, to include the white house. Don't believe it if a dem tells you he is not for the rich, thier voting record will tell you differently. Repubs are the same.
But give us true conservitives a few more elections.
The rich oligarchy claims to be the "job creators" all the while they are shipping our jobs overseas.
The rich oligarchy needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
The rich oligarchy stole America's pension funds and replaced them with easily plundered 401Ks.
The rich oligarchy needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
Congress is completely dominated by the rich oligarchy. Americas working families have no representation.
The rich oligarchy needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
House ready to OK GOP budget
Give the rich the lowest taxes, take from the middle class, ignore the poor.
Not very Christian.
The rich oligarchy is fine with wasting and stealing hundreds of billions on their phony "wars" but cannot abide that working families want to take care of their elders.
The rich oligarchy is pathetic and needs to be taken down about 14 notches.
The rich oligarchy is fine with granting Mutt Money tax breaks and low rates while closing down our schools for lack of funding.
If the House Budget is defeated in the Senate, will the Senate bother to draft and vote on their own plan this year?
Many budgets have been drafted but none can get to the floor for open debate.
The rich oligarchy cannot even pass a clean transportation bill because they want to figure out how they can steal those tax monies also.
People!! People!! People!!!
Republican voters will be hit also!!!!
"Because our Republican colleagues refuse to ask millionaires to contribute one cent to deficit reduction, they hit everyone and everything else."
STexan you forgot to mention "Fox News" fair and balanced.