THE Senate marched ahead on a compromise to the Republican budget on Tuesday, May 5 that calls for future cuts in spending while immediately boosting Pentagon accounts by an additional $38 billion.
The House of Representatives approved the non-binding blueprint last week, and a final Senate vote that afternoon would complete the action. The chamber voted 53-44 to move ahead with the House-Senate compromise.
The budget plan does not go to President Barack Obama, who has promised to veto follow-up spending bills that he claims will shortchange domestic programs like federal student aid, transportation grants, and scientific research.
The measure sets up a fast-track debate this summer that would permit Republicans to finally pass legislation to repeal Obama’s health care law, though he is likely to veto it. However, Republicans have no plans to follow up the budget proposal’s call for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts with binding legislation that would, for instance, curb Medicare payments to providers, tighten food stamp eligibility rules, or desert poorer and disabled people off the traditional Medicaid program.
The budget, however, sets up a battle later this year over the 12 annual spending bills setting agency operating budgets. Republicans have also skirted the budget rules, and are trying to award the Pentagon with a 7 percent budget hike while still keeping domestic programs at current spending levels.
Obama and his Democratic allies in the Senate have said they will block those budget moves, and are calling for a budget summit that would replace immediate and automatic budget cuts known as sequestration with longer-term substitute cuts and revenues from closing tax loopholes. Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio say tax increases are out of the question.
Under Washington’s obscure budget process, lawmakers typically first adopt a budget that’s essentially a visionary document that sets goals politicians are often unwilling to pursue. The GOP budget proposal also lacks specifics about what programs would be cut, insulating the Senate Republicans prevailed in a debate over a Medicare plan championed by House Republicans that would give people joining the system after 2024 a subsidy to purchase health insurance on the open market, rather than a guaranteed package of services. (Allyson Escobar/AJPress with reports from Associated Press)
