Rep. Ryan's sequester replacement plan passes House, sparing deep defense cuts

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Human Events:

A proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to replace sequester budget cuts slid through the House Thursday after a partisan debate which for Democrats focused on leaving food stamp programs intact and for Republicans centered on choosing national security over slush fund waste. The measure passed 218 to 199 after five hours of debate.

The bill would reduce entitlement programs, redundancies, and loopholes within mandatory spending items in the Federal budget by over $240 billion over the next decade in order to prevent most of a tranche of cuts to the Defense Department that would take effect at the start of 2013 under last year’s Budget Control Act. If the cuts are not avoided, they will cut Defense spending by 10 percent across the board over the next decade, with additional eight-percent cuts to domestic programs over the same period.

Replacement savings in the bill included food stamp aid to qualifying households, preventing illegal immigrants from taking advantage of child tax credits by requiring a social security number, and implementing moderate limitations in growth on programs like Medicaid.

Ryan emphasized that the bill was targeting “slush funds” and programs that rarely saw Congressional oversight. The 1.8 million recipients of food stamps who would lose that benefit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, were the ones, he said, who never merited it in the first place.

“If you’re eligible for food stamps today, you’ll be eligible for food stamps tomorrow under this bill,” he said. “This is where our taxpayer funds are going. What we’re saying is government spending on these programs should go to the people who are intended, not to the people who are not eligible, and not intended.”

Democrats had been expected to introduce an amendment, authored by Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the Budget Committee, which would find savings and revenue by raising taxes on the wealthy and a slate on other programs, but they were not allowed to introduce the amendment, on the grounds that it violated the rules of the house by adding net tax revenue.

Ryan said the ratio of revenue increase to spending cuts was three-to-one under the Democratic proposal, and, would result in a net increase of government spending as well as taxes.

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House shifts pending budget cuts from defense to entitlements

 

Six months after the congressional supercommittee failed to come to a long-term deal on federal spending, House Republicans reignited the debate Thursday by passing legislation that would stop looming defense cuts and instead cut hundreds of billions of dollars from entitlement programs.

The legislation, passed on a 218-199 vote, is unlikely to advance beyond the House. The Senate hasn’t shown any interest in holding a budget debate this year, and the White House said President Obama likely would veto the House bill if it reaches his desk.

But it serves as a marker in a debate that all sides expect to play out as the end-of-the-year deadline for the defense cuts grows nearer.

“This is a small step in the right direction,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the man who wrote the outlines of the GOP plan. He said Republicans should be proud they are using the budget process to try to cut spending, after years in which it was used to pass the president’s health care initiative or, under Republicans in the past decade, to push through tax cuts.

The defense cuts were set into motion by last year’s debt deal, which allowed the president to raise the government’s borrowing limit but called for spending cuts to go along with the increase. The supercommittee, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers, was supposed to try to replace the automatic cuts, known as sequesters, with more careful trims, but failed — leaving the ax to fall at the end of this year.

Mr. Obama and both parties on Capitol Hill say they want to avoid the sequesters, but have shown no ability to find common ground.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/10/house-shifts-pending-budget-cuts-from-defense-to-e/