A week after losing a Republican-leaning House seat, the GOP will schedule a vote on whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling that they hope will show that Democrats are just as unwilling to increase how much the government can borrow without significantly reducing how much it spends. Republicans, anxious from the loss in New York that was blamed on their efforts to cut Medicare, are eager to show voters that Democrats are also insisting on reining in spending and that it’s not just the GOP taking a knife to popular government programs.
The proposal to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling is not expected to pass and Democrats dismiss the vote as a political stunt. But Republicans say it will help force Congress and the White House to accept that significant cuts will be necessary in any bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling.
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The GOP also wants voters to know that their agenda goes beyond reducing federal spending.
Republicans announced they will begin pushing job creation proposals in response to apparent voter disenchantment with the budget slashing on which they’ve focused since taking control of the House in January.
“The House Republican Plan For America’s Job Creators” was rolled out barely two days after the GOP’s stunning loss in New York’s 26th District to Democrat Kathy Hochul.
While there was a third-party candidate in the special election who spent millions of dollars and helped split the GOP vote, the party was shaken by polling data that showed the real culprit in the race may have been the Republican plan to dramatically alter Medicare.
New York voters, polls indicate, were fearful that Republican Jane Corwin, if elected, would help pass the GOP Medicare proposal, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which would transform the program into a “premium support” voucher system.
After Corwin’s loss, Republicans wasted no time pivoting to their job creation plan, with a dozen members lining up at a press conference to talk about lowering the corporate tax rate and reducing regulations on businesses with hardly a mention of entitlement reform.
“I could be somewhat critical of how the campaign was run, but the fact is, we didn’t win,” House Speaker John Boehner said of the New York race. “And the small part of the reason we didn’t win clearly had to do with Medicare.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the New York race would not change the GOP’s desire to include Medicare reform in any debt ceiling deal.
“You simply cannot get a comprehensive solution or a pathway to a solution on our debt and deficit problem and leave entitlements aside,” McConnell said.
A bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers has been meeting with Vice President Biden in recent week to hammer out an agreement on budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling deal in time for an Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department. So far, the two sides have come up with about $1 trillion in cuts, but Medicare has not been part of the discussion.
Some political strategists suggest that Republicans should heed the lessons learned in New York and drop the subject of Medicare reform.
“The Ryan plan is a stone-cold loser,” Democratic strategist Doug Schoen said. “The quicker they get off it the better they will do.”
