The House on Thursday voted to pass a budget blueprint for the next decade that would cut billions of dollars in planned federal spending, reduce taxes and reform Medicare.
The bill, authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., passed 228-191, over the objection of House Democrats, who said the proposal would cut taxes for the wealthy at the expense of seniors and the poor.
The Ryan budget has virtually no chance of passage in the Democratically held Senate. But putting it on the floor for a vote gave the GOP a chance to showcase its fiscally conservative credentials before upcoming elections that may serve as a referendum on the job they have done upholding their 2010 pledge to reduce the country’s massive debt and the ever expanding size of government.
“People are desperate to see a strong signal from Washington that we are prepared to make the tough decisions necessary to address our nation’s fiscal crisis,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said before the vote.
Many in the GOP conference wanted to push the party further to the right on the budget, and Ryan’s blueprint was not the most conservative proposal offered on the House floor Thursday.
Hours before approving the Ryan plan, which would cap federal discretionary spending for 2013 at $1.028 trillion, the House defeated a budget proposal that would have pared spending back even further — to just $931 billion.
That budget plan, authored by the conservative Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, called for replacing federal support of Medicaid with block grants to the states in an effort to curb runaway spending on that program.
It failed 136-285, and of those lawmakers who rejected it, 104 were Republicans.
“Not everyone in the conference agrees with cutting that fast and giving that much responsibility back to the state,” Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., told The Washington Examiner. “I’m going to support the most conservative budget we can get out of here,” Lankford said. “I’d love to see more cuts faster.”
Jordan’s plan promised to balance the budget in five years, while Ryan’s budget proposal would require 28 years to get rid of the deficit.
Democrats, meanwhile, hammered away at both Republican plans as targeting the nation’s most vulnerable and the middle class.
“We don’t think that its bold to provide tax breaks for millionaires while you are ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
The Ryan plan would replace the current tax code with two tax brackets set at 10 percent and 25 percent and would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
It would replace traditional Medicare with a voucher program and would gradually increase the age of eligibility for beneficiaries.
Democrats accused Republicans of violating an agreement made in August between the two parties to cap 2013 spending at $1.047 trillion. The Ryan plan shaves $19 billion from that figure.
But Republicans argued their plan would save Medicare, which is headed toward insolvency, and bolster the economy by ending reckless government spending and lowering taxes.
“Economic growth, jobs, upward mobility, this is what we are striving for,” Ryan said. “We put our trust in citizens, not in the government.”
