Democratic leaders in the Senate Wednesday forced a vote on the House Republican budget proposal, making GOP lawmakers publicly back a controversial plan to overhaul Medicare that Democrats believe will be a millstone for the party during 2012 elections. The House proposal, written by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would cut the budget by more than $6 trillion and turn Medicare into a “premium support” system with a higher enrollment age.
While it easily passed the Republican-controlled House earlier this year, it had no chance of passage in the Senate, where Democrats are in the majority. It failed Wednesday evening by a vote of 40 to 57. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was eager to score political points by forcing GOP senators to take a stand one way or the other on their Medicare plan.
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His enthusiasm for pushing a vote was increased by the results of a special election in New York Tuesday night in which a Democrat won after casting the contest as a referendum on the Ryan plan.
Democrats in recent weeks spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaign advertising in New York’s 26th District House race describing the GOP plan as a radical proposal to “end Medicare as we know it.”
The district, long a GOP stronghold, fell to Democrat Kathy Hochul Tuesday in part because of voter backlash against the GOP plan, some pre-election polling suggests, though a third-party candidate split the GOP vote.
“Last night the people of New York’s 26th District resoundingly spoke,” Reid, D-Nev., said. “My question to my Republican colleagues is very simple. Will you listen to the American people? Because their message could not be clearer.”
Even before the election results in New York came in, the Ryan budget had no chance of winning Senate approval because 60 votes were required for passage and Republicans control just 46 votes. Four Republicans said they would vote against it including moderate Sens. Scott Brown, of Massachusetts and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., opposed the Ryan budget as well, saying the cuts do not go far enough.
Reid allowed votes on separate budget proposals put forward by Paul and fellow freshman Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., both of which failed.
The Senate unanimously rejected a vote on a fourth plan, President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, which Democrats said does not represent Obama’s latest budget proposal that he unveiled in April.
In the House, meanwhile, Republicans defended the Medicare plan and rejected the notion that the election in New York is predictive of what’s to come in 2012, when they are all up for re-election.
“If voters feel differently about the cuts, that’s part of the process,” said Rep. Charlie Bass, R-N.H., who lost his swing district seat in 2005 and then won it back in November. “”I’m not nervous or worried in any manner. I’m doing what I think is right for seniors.”
Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., a Tea Party GOP freshman, said his party has failed to explain clearly to voters the need to reform a Medicare system that is headed for bankruptcy.
“I think that the other side has been able to demagogue the message a lot better than we have been able to get the right message out,” West said.
