House passes budget cuts

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

In a prelude to a summer showdown with President Barack Obama, Republicans controlling the House pushed to passage on Friday a bold but politically dangerous budget blueprint to slash social safety-net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid and fundamentally restructure Medicare health care for the elderly.

The nonbinding plan lays out a fiscal vision cutting $6.2 trillion from yearly federal deficits over the coming decade and calls for transforming Medicare from a program in which the government directly pays medical bills into a voucher-like system that subsidizes purchases of private insurance plans

The GOP budget passed 235-193 with every Democrat voting “no.” Obama said in an Associated Press interview that it would “make Medicare into a voucher program. That’s something that we strongly object to.”

The vote sets up the Republicans’ next round of confrontation with Obama and Democrats over must-pass legislation to allow the government to borrow more money to finance its operations and obligations to holders of U.S. bonds. For the first time, Obama acknowledged that raising the debt limit is “not going to happen without some spending cuts” insisted upon by Republicans and some Democrats.

The vote came on the same day Obama signed a hard-fought six-month spending bill that averted a government shutdown while cutting $38 billion from the government. Struck last week, the compromise was the first between the White House and the emboldened Republican majority in the House.

Under the House Republican plan approved Friday, deficits requiring the federal government to borrow more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends would be cut by the end of the decade to 8 cents of borrowing for every dollar spent.

“If the president won’t lead, we will,” Boehner said as he closed debate. “No more kicking the can down the road, no more whistling past the graveyard. Now is the time to address the serious challenges that face the American people, and we will.”

The plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., exposes Republicans to political risk. Its Medicare proposal would give people presently 54 or younger health-insurance subsidies that would steadily lose value over time — even as current beneficiaries and people 55 and older would stay in the current system.