Senate Rejects Bush Medicaid Cuts

WASHINGTON – The Senate delivered a slap at President Bush and its own Republican leaders yesterday by voting to erase his plans for cutting Medicaid, community development, school aid, and other parts of next year’s $2.6 trillion budget.In a surprise, the Senate also voted to practically double the budget’s tax cuts to $134 billion over the next five years, even more than Mr. Bush and the more conservative House have sought.Foreshadowing clashes ahead, the House approved its own fiscal outline relying on far deeper reductions in Medicaid and other domestic programs. After its 218-214 passage, top House Republicans chided the other chamber for not clamping down more on spending at a time of massive federal deficits.“I’m not real pleased with what I’m hearing the Senate say” with its votes on spending, said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, a Republican of Iowa. He said he was looking forward to seeing what the Senate would “limp off the floor with.”Overall, the tax cuts and spending increases the Senate approved during yesterday’s votes would cost more than $80 billion over the next five years even as GOP leaders say they want to stanch federal red ink.It was unclear whether the Senate’s larger tax cut, or the other changes, will survive in the eventual House-Senate compromise budget. The tax cut was approved 55-45.Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire, said budgets often go from being “cute little bunny rabbits to camels” during debates, then “hopefully get back to cute little bunny rabbits” when the House-Senate compromise is completed.Senator Bunning, a Republican of Kentucky who sponsored the deeper tax reduction, suggested it be used to roll back Social Security tax increases imposed on some higher-income recipients in 1993. That decision will be made in later legislation.In the Senate’s watershed 52-48 roll call, a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans voted to yank all $14 billion in proposed five-year cuts from Medicaid, the federal-state healthcare program for the poor and disabled.Those reductions, 1% of expected Medicaid spending over the period, are the keystone of plans by Mr. Bush and GOP congressional leaders to start controlling federal deficits that surged to a record $412 billion last year and show little sign of abating.Senator Smith, a Republican of Oregon who led the fight against the Medicaid cuts, conceded the House-Senate compromise budget will likely contain some Medicaid savings and said he would vote for it. Even so, the Senate vote highlighted many lawmakers’ unease with making even modest cuts in rapidly growing benefits, which consume nearly two-thirds of the budget.“The courage simply isn’t here,” said the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire who said benefit savings were needed to avoid passing unbearably high debts to younger generations.Without naming his fellow Republicans who opposed the Medicaid savings, he added, “You just have to ask yourself how they get up in the morning and look in the mirror.”The budget sets overall tax and spending targets to guide Congress as it writes bills later in the year that make actual changes in programs and tax laws. That means some policies the budget suggests may never be enacted, though the votes are often precursors for what lawmakers will eventually do.Mr. Bush proposed $8.5 billion in five-year Medicaid savings, while the House would rely on up to $20 billion in reductions from the program.

Senate Rejects Bush Medicaid Cuts

Senate Rejects Bush Medicaid Cuts

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