House passes sweeping budget-cut bill
GOP rounds up enough reluctant moderates to eke out win

Friday, November 18, 2005; Posted: 4:48 a.m. EST (09:48 GMT)


WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans basked in triumph after razor-thin passage of a sweeping budget cut plan in the wee hours of Friday morning .

But intra-party tensions are sure to flare again when negotiations begin next month on a House-Senate compromise measure. Differences over opening an Arctic wilderness to oil drilling promise to be difficult if not impossible to resolve.

Still, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, and Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, were buoyant -- if exhausted -- after sweating out a big victory on the budget cut bill.

After all, they had just salvaged -- at least for the moment -- a major pillar of their agenda despite divisions within the party and nervousness among moderates that the vote could cost them in next year's elections.

The bill, passed 217-215 after a 25-minute-long roll call, makes modest but politically painful cuts across an array of programs for the poor, students and farmers.

President Bush, at a summit in Busan, South Korea, called the budget plan "a significant savings package that will restrain spending and keep us on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009." He urged House and Senate negotiators to reach prompt agreement.

The victory on the deficit-control bill came hours after an embarrassing and rare defeat on a $602 billion spending bill for education, health care and job training programs this year. The earlier 224-209 vote halted what had been a steady drive to complete annual appropriations bills freezing many agency budgets. (Full story)

The broader budget bill would slice almost $50 billion from the deficit by the end of the decade by curbing rapidly growing benefit programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies. Republicans said reining in such programs whose costs spiral upward each year automatically is the first step to restoring fiscal discipline.

"This unchecked spending is growing faster than our economy, faster than inflation, and far beyond our means to sustain it," said Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa.

In passing the bill, Republicans buffed up their party's budget-cutting credentials as they try to reduce a deficit swelled by spending on the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. Democrats countered that a companion tax bill that could advance as early as Friday would more than eat up the savings.

The budget plan squeaked through after an all-day search by Hastert, Blunt and others to round up votes from reluctant moderates and other lawmakers uneasy with the bill.

House leaders now face arduous talks with the Senate, which passed a much more modest plan earlier this month. Negotiators face difficult negotiations over Arctic drilling, Medicaid and student loans, among other issues.

Fourteen Republicans voted "no," including several who had harshly condemned the bill in the days leading up to the vote.

To win House approval, Hastert ordered modest concessions on plans to limit eligibility for food stamps and require the poorest Medicaid patients to pay more for their care. He ordered killed a provision to deny free school lunches to about 40,000 children whose parents would lose their food stamps.

The biggest concession came Thursday evening with inclusion of language to permit food stamp recipients making the transition from welfare to work to continue to be able to receive non-cash benefits for child care, transportation and housing without losing their nutrition benefits.

The bill drew unanimous opposition from Democrats, who objected to both cuts in programs for the poor and the fact that the deficit-reduction bill would increase the deficit when combined with a tax bill slated for a vote later that would extend tax cuts on capital gains and dividend income due to expire at the end of 2008.

The overall bill would cut the deficit through a combination of new revenues from auctioning television airwaves to wireless companies and myriad cuts to entitlement programs like Medicaid.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/18/con...s.ap/index.html



Catherine

More Orwellian doublespeak from the Republicans. Their plan for "deficit-reduction" increases the deficit.

Oh well, at least the Democrats showed some backbone and united for once, against this attack on the least forunate Americans.

I know something the Republicans can cut that would save them billions and billions: A little thing called the "Iraq War".

How about cutting that instead of cutting funding for social programs to help needy Americans?

This just shows the priorities of the Republicans are not that of the American people.

We need to use their victory in getting this passed against them to show what programs they cut and how they are against the common man.

Their so-called "victory" can be used to cut their own throat.

Where is the outrage?

An even greater question has got to be,

Will the House and Senate continue the reverse Robin Hood
and pass the next wave of tax cuts for the very rich?

I am sad to say it, but I bet they will pass the get richer tax benefits for the richest. It's so freaking sad.

I grew up in a very poor family and there were a few times that my single mother (I have 3 brothers and sisters) had to use food stamps to help feed us. We generally got a little over a $100 a month (oh ya, we were all FAT and happy on that), but thank goodness she at least got that, otherwise, who knows what would have happened. My mother always worked two jobs and was hardly ever at home, but she tried. And isn't that the point of social welfare programs? Seriously, I wonder how many republicans would admit that they have used these programs? Isn't not like only democrats use student loans or WIC or, hell, even their local health department. All of these things are necessary and wonderful.

Today is a sad, sad day.

It is a battle between outrage and despair. Today the despair is winning.

Don't despair...flood your reps with faxes, phone calls, and emails. We should commit to at least one of each every day. Contribute financially if you can to the grassroots efforts of organizations who are fighting tooth and nail to remind the 2006 contenders that we will remember who they stood up for in this budget battle. The machines may be rigged but maybe the tiny, tiny consciences of these rats will bother them forevermore. Make them FEAR the common people when they go to the polls next November.

Find out what is being done in your hometowns by the Dems to bring down the Rethugs in 2006. Make those bastards who caved to Hastert FEEL the BURN...they were obviously worried before they caved...wonder what that fat, creepo bastard promised them...a Diebold Victory? Probably, otherwise why did they cave when they were so worried about 2006? He had to have promised them SOMETHING that was more attractive than the FEAR of their losing their cushy jobs.

AND I like AFW's idea...just bring the troops home. What a coup for the budget.

Catherine

I do. I contact my 2 senators and one rep often. So I'm sure they see my name, and say Oh that loony again. Especially when so many of my neighbors can't even *name* their 2 senators and a rep, ya know? I kinda wish there were more people to complain to than just them. And then you get the sense that they're going to do what they want to do anyway?

Every goddamn one of mine in both Houses of Congress are Rethugs...but I keep hammering them. Makes me feel better, anyway. I live in a blue nano-section of a red state.


Catherine

Yeah, that's why I do it too! To make myself feel better.

They don't admit that they use federal government benefits, because Republicans suffer from cognitive dissonance. Somehow, they divorce themselves from reality as they are cashing their government assistance checks.

Actually, many more Republicans use these services than do Democrats. Typically, more urbanized Democratic "blue" states contribute billions of dollars more per year to the federal government than they receive in benefits. Most of the Republican "red" states are the net recipients of this massive aid in social benefits.


This map shows which states are net donors to the federal treasury and which states are net recipients of federal largess. Net donors are green, and net recipients are red. Oregon and Florida are nearly even.


This map shows which states voted Democrat or Republican in 2004.

Notice a bit of similarity to the previous map?

Its strange to me that the poorest states, and therefore the most likely NOT to benefit from any Rep. gov't, are all red states....

Kind of like the factory workers voting out a union.

Those states are typically quite socially and fiscally conservative.
(even though most of them draw more from the govt than they give to it)

This attitude is what the Repugs tapped into, and they willingly lied their ass's off to sell them selves.

Now, the debt is coming due. Katrina exposed the lie.
Red state America has to accept that they are getting exactly what they asked for!

If the Democrats were determined and resourceful, they would use this so-called "victory" against the Republicans to further paint them as the party of big business and war, and against the little man and social programs.

I said "IF", which is a very big "If". I wonder if the Democratic party has it in them to be a serious opposition party. What do you think?

But that would require the democrats to grow spines, which they have little of (but seem to be changing.)