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Mahoganyanais
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 229
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 10:00 pm: | 
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House Passes Budget that Cuts Medicaid
By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The House narrowly passed a $2.6 trillion budget Thursday evening that would cut back the Medicaid health care program for the poor for the first time since 1997 in a step toward trimming federal deficits.
The 214-211 vote approved a blueprint that instructs lawmakers to freeze or cut spending in many domestic programs outside defense and homeland security and restrain farm, student loan, pension and some other government programs that grow automatically from year to year.
The Senate simultaneously debated the measure and moved toward a vote Thursday night.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said it's time to look closely at benefit programs that are "popular but rife with waste."
"These entitlement programs deserve reform," he said. "The Medicaid system is antiquated and the quality of care is not being brought to the people that need it."
Democrats blasted the planned cuts and expressed doubt that the budget's projections of shrinking deficits would happen.
"This budget is an assault on our values," said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. "This budget we are passing today will pass mountains of debt onto our children and grandchildren."
The budget would shave automatically increasing benefit programs by $35 billion over five years while also cutting taxes by as much as $106 billion over the same period.
President Bush praised the House vote. "This is a responsible budget that reins in spending to limits not seen in years," he said in a written statement.
Medicaid, the federal-state health program for needy and disabled Americans, gets marked for the single biggest change, a $10 billion reduction over four years. The changes in Medicaid wouldn't begin until 2007, giving a specially convened commission and the nation's governors time to recommend cost-saving proposals.
Without any change, the Congressional Budget Office expects the government to spend $191 billion on Medicaid next year and more than $1.1 trillion over the five years covered by the budget.
"We are confronting a massive problem, a fiscal problem as a nation, and the effects of this problem is that somebody is going to have to pay this bill," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record), R-Ore., who held Republican leaders in protracted negotiations over the size of Medicaid reductions, announced his support for the plan.
"Those who care about Medicaid, those who are served by Medicaid, be engaged and know that my office, my heart, my mind are open to you to do this right and not just to do this fast," Smith said.
Smith said he's working with the White House to assemble a commission through the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine. The advisory panel would recommend one round of changes by Sept. 1 and issue a final report for comprehensive restructuring in December 2006.
The budget could also pave the way for opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. In past years, the drilling authorization has died in the Senate because of a filibuster threat. The budget resolution protects future bills from filibuster, giving lawmakers an opening to authorize drilling without that obstruction.
The budget sketches out plans and priorities for spending $2.6 trillion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, projecting a federal deficit of $383 billion. Lawmakers use the blueprint to pass specific tax and spending legislation later in the year.
It aims toward bringing federal budget deficits down to $211 billion by 2010. The president asked Congress to cut the deficit in half over five years.
In addition to planned reductions in projected Medicaid spending, it directs lawmakers to cull about $3 billion from agriculture programs and as much as $6.6 billion from federal pension programs, including higher fees paid by employers.
Government programs with budgets set annually by lawmakers would get a total of $843 billion next year, a 2 percent increase that's in line with a strict budget proposed by the president.
The agreement drops several billion dollars that the Senate voted to add to education spending and assumes $50 billion in extra spending next year for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The budget directs lawmakers to prepare their legislation for tax cuts and deficit-reducing changes by Sept. 16, to be completed with an item paving the way for increasing the legal limits on the national debt.
Under congressional rules, tax and spending legislation passed under direction from the budget is immune from filibuster delays in the Senate. Republicans hold 55 seats in the Senate and would need 51 votes to pass the related tax and spending measures.
The budget directions protect about $70 billion of $106 billion in tax cuts from filibuster. Options include extensions of many expiring tax breaks, most urgently a change that would prevent the alternative minimum tax from encroaching closer to the middle class.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2415
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 29, 2005 - 07:23 am: |
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Mah,
The sad reality is Medicaid recipients are amongst the nation’s least potent citizens.
They’re broke. They vote infrequently (and when they do, they vote Democratic). They don’t own homes. Pay taxes.
In this era of the “(un)compassionate conservative”, those foks hardly have a chance. |
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