GOP budget takes aim again at Obamacare, Medicaid
WASHINGTON — House Republicans unveiled their latest budget outline today, sticking to their plans to try to repeal so-called Obamacare, cut domestic programs ranging from Medicaid to college grants and require future Medicare patients to bear more of the program’s cost.
The point is to prove it’s possible to balance the budget within 10 years by simply cutting spending and avoiding further tax hikes, even though the fiscal blueprint released today by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will be dead on arrival with the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate.
The latest Ryan plan generally resembles prior ones, relying on higher tax revenues enacted in January and improved Medicare cost estimates — along with somewhat sharper spending cuts — to promise balance.
Senate Democrats plan to offer a counterproposal on Wednesday with higher spending on domestic programs and additional tax hikes on top of the higher rates imposed on top-bracket earners in January. That plan will, in turn, arrive as a dead letter in the GOP-controlled House.
The partisan exercise comes even as President Barack Obama travels to Capitol Hill today to meet with Senate Democrats in an attempt to resuscitate his failed efforts for bipartisanship.
“On the current path, we’ll spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. Under our proposal, we’ll spend $41 trillion,” Ryan said in an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal. “On the current path, spending will increase by 5 percent each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4 percent.”
