WHAT NOW? Bipartisan plan

Conservatives want more cuts; moderates concerned measure goes too far

Senate Republicans are scrambling to pick up the pieces after their attempt to repeal and replace the Obama-era health care law collapsed for a second time. They now must decide whether to keep working on a partisan bill, invite Democrats to the table or drop the whole thing and move on to tax reform.

GOP plan

Senate Republicans can keep talking among themselves in an attempt to come up with another Republican-only plan. This strategy has been unsuccessful so far because, with 52 members, Senate Republicans can afford to lose only two votes. Conservatives and moderates in the House managed to bridge their differences and narrowly pass a bill. Since then, President Donald Trump has called the House measure “mean,” and Senate Republicans have been unable to rally around a replacement. Senators can go back to the committee room and work on a bipartisan basis “in a way that the public feels that we are really working toward their best interests,” Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said. “It’s where we should have started . ... And, yes, this is hard.” Republicans say they are committed to repealing Barack Obama’s health care law, which is a nonstarter for Democrats. Democrats say they are open to improving the program, but that would fall well short of Republican campaign promises.

Move on

A rewrite of the tax code may be the best chance for Trump to score a major legislative win this year. The measure would require about $200 billion of cuts to benefit programs and other so-called mandatory spending coupled with the tax plan. It also proposes trillions of dollars of cuts to the social safety net and other domestic programs and puts congressional Republicans at odds with Trump over cutting Medicare. It also would sharply boost military spending.

WASHINGTON» Despite opposition from Republican moderates and conservatives, House leaders are pressing ahead with a budget plan whose success is critical to the party’s hopes to deliver on one of President Donald Trump’s top priorities — a GOPonly effort to overhaul the tax code.

The importance of the measure has been magnified by the cratering in the Senate of the Trump-backed effort to repeal Presi- dent Barack Obama’s health care law, leaving a rewrite of the tax code as the best chance for Trump to score a major legislative win this year. The measure would require about $200 billion of cuts to benefit programs and other so-called mandatory spending coupled with the tax plan.

The budget plan unveiled Tuesday is crucial because its passage would pave the way to pass a tax overhaul this fall without the fear of a filibuster by Senate Democrats.

But it also proposes trillions of dollars in cuts to the social safety net and other do- mestic programs and puts congressional Republicans at odds with Trump over cutting Medicare. It also would boost military spending sharply.

“In past years, the budget has only been a vision. But now, with the Republican Congress and a Republican White House, this budget is a plan for action,” said Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black, RTenn. “Now is our moment to achieve real results.”

Unclear, however, is whether GOP lead-

ers can get the budget measure through the House. Conservatives want a larger package of spending cuts to accompany this fall’s tax overhaul bill, while moderates are concerned cuts to programs such as food stamps could go too far.

“I just think that if you’re dealing with too many mandatory cuts while you’re dealing with tax reform you make tax reform that much harder to enact,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.

Black announced a committee vote for Wednesday but was less confident of a vote by the entire House next week; a delay seems likely because of the ongoing quarrel between the GOP’s factions.

The House GOP plan proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher-like program in which future retirees would receive a fixed benefit to purchase health insurance on the open market. Republicans have proposed the idea each year since taking back the House in 2011, but they’ve never tried to implement it — and that’s not going to change now, even with a Republican as president.

“Republicans would destroy the Medicare guarantee for our seniors and inflict bone-deep cuts to Medicaid that would devastate veterans, seniors with long-term care needs and rural communities,” said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

The plan promises to balance the budget through unprecedented and politically unworkable cuts across the budget. It calls for turning this year’s projected $700 billion-or-so deficit into a $9 billion surplus by 2027. It would do so by slashing $5.4 trillion over the coming decade, including almost $500 billion from Medicare and $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and the Obama health law, along with sweeping cuts to benefits such as federal employee pensions, food stamps and tax credits for the working poor.

But in the immediate future the GOP measure is a budget buster. It would add almost $30 billion to Trump’s $668 billion request for national defense. The GOP budget plan would cut non-defense agencies by $5 billion. And of the more than $4 trillion in promised saving from mandatory programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the plan assumes just $203 billion would actually pass this year.

Democrats focused their fire on the plan’s sweeping promises to cut from almost every corner of the budget other than Social Security, defense and veterans programs. At the same time, they have little fear those cuts would be implemented.

Top Budget Committee Democrat John Yarmuth of Kentucky told reporters the GOP “utilizes a lot of gimmicks and vagueness to reach some semblance of theoretical balance and also hides a lot of the draconian cuts that would be inflicted on the American people.”

All told, the GOP plan would spend about $67 billion more in the upcoming annual appropriations bills than would be allowed under harsh spending limits set by a 2011 budget and debt agreement. It pads war accounts by $10 billion. And, like Trump’s budget, the House GOP plan assumes rosy economic projections that would erase an additional $1.5 trillion from the deficit over 10 years.

The budget resolution is nonbinding. It would allow Republicans controlling Congress to pass follow-up legislation through the Senate without the threat of a filibuster by Democrats. GOP leaders and the White House plan to use that measure to rewrite the tax code.

As proposed by House leaders, tax reform would essentially be deficit-neutral, which means cuts to tax rates would be mostly “paid for” by closing various tax breaks.