House OKs budget plan
$4.1 trillion measure makes deep cuts to social programs
The House on WASHINGTON
Thursday passed a $4.1 trillion budget plan that promises deep cuts to social programs while paving the way for Republicans to rewrite the tax code later this year.
The 2018 House GOP budget reprises a controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucherlike program for future retirees as well as the party’s efforts to repeal the “Obamacare” health law. Republicans controlling Congress have no plans to actually implement those cuts while they pursue their tax overhaul.
That’s especially so in the Senate, where the Budget Committee on Thursday gave party-line approval to a companion plan.
Instead, the nonbinding budget’s chief purpose is to set the stage for a tax overhaul plan that is the party’s top political priority as well as a longtime policy dream of key leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan.
The House measure, passed by a near party-line vote of 219-206, calls for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade, promising to slash Medicaid by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years, cutting other health care costs, and forcing huge cuts to domestic programs funded in future years by Congress.
“It’s a budget that will help grow our economy, and it’s a budget that will help rein in our debt,” said Ryan, R-Wis. “It reforms Medicaid. It strengthens Medicare.”
But Republicans are not actually planning to impose any of those cuts with follow-up legislation that would be required under Washington’s Byzantine budget rules. Instead, those GOP proposals for spending cuts are limited to nonbinding promises, and even a token 10-year, $200 billion spending cut package demanded by tea party House Republicans appears likely to be scrapped in upcoming talks with the Senate.
Instead, the motivating force behind the budget measures is the Republicans’ party-defining drive to cut corporate and individual tax rates and rid the tax code of loopholes. They promise this tax “reform” measure will put the economy in overdrive, driving economic growth to the 3 percent range, and adding a surge of new tax revenues.