House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Social Security to balance budget
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Social Security to balance budget
House Republicans released a proposal Tuesday that would balance the budget in nine years — but only by making large cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Social Security, that President Trump vowed not to touch.
The House Budget Committee is aiming to pass the blueprint this week, but that may be as far as it goes this midterm election year. It is not clear that GOP leaders will put the document on the House floor for a vote, and even if it were to pass the House, the budget would have little impact on actual spending levels.
Nonetheless the budget serves as an expression of Republicans’ priorities at a time of rapidly rising deficits and debt. Although the nation’s growing indebtedness has been exacerbated by the GOP’s own policy decisions — including the new tax law, which most analyses say will add at least $1 trillion to the debt — Republicans on the Budget Committee said they felt a responsibility to put the nation on a sounder fiscal trajectory.
“The time is now for our Congress to step up and confront the biggest challenge to our society,” said House Budget Chairman Steve Womack (R-Ark.). “There is not a bigger enemy on the domestic side than the debt and deficits.”'
The Republican budget confronts this enemy by taking a whack at entitlement spending. Lawmakers of both parties agree that spending that is not subject to Congress’s annual appropriations process is becoming unsustainable. But Trump has largely taken it off the table by refusing to touch Medicare or Social Security, and Democrats have little interest in addressing it except as part of a larger deal including tax increases — the sort of “Grand Bargain” that eluded President Barack Obama.
The House Republican budget, entitled “A Brighter American Future,” would remake Medicare by giving seniors the option of enrolling in private plans that compete with traditional Medicare, a system of competition designed to keep costs down but dismissed by critics as an effort to privatize the program. Along with other changes, the budget proposes to squeeze $537 billion out of Medicare over the next decade.
The budget would transform Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor, by limiting per capita payments or allowing states to turn it into a block-grant program — the same approach House Republicans took in their legislation that passed last year to repeal the Affordable Care Act (the repeal effort died in the Senate, but the GOP budget assumes the repeal takes place). It also proposes adding work requirements for certain
adults enrolled in Medicaid. Changes to Medicaid and other health programs would account for $1.5 trillion in savings.
Social Security comes in for more modest cuts of $4 billion over the decade, which the budget projects could be reached by eliminating concurrent receipt of unemployment benefits and Social Security disability insurance.
The budget also proposes a number of other cost-saving measures, some of which could prove unpopular if implemented, such as adding more work requirements for food-stamp and welfare recipients and requiring federal employees — including members of Congress — to contribute more to their retirement plans. It assumes repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act that regulated banks after the financial crisis 10 years ago, something Congress recently rejected in passing a banking bill into law that softened some of the key provisions of Dodd-Frank but left its overall structures intact. And the budget proposes $230 billion in cuts from education and training programs, including consolidating student loan programs and reducing Pell Grant awards.
The budget also relies on rosy economic-growth projections and proposes using a budgetary mechanism to require other congressional committees to come up with a combined $302 billion in unspecified deficit reduction.
Overall, the partisan proposal was reminiscent of the budget released in 2011 by now-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who was then the Budget Committee chairman and advanced a bold proposal attacking entitlements, slashing spending — and creating lines of attack for Democrats once Ryan became Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate on the GOP ticket the following year.
Democrats were quick to criticize the GOP proposal, while contending that Republicans were opening themselves up to election-year attacks by releasing it at all.
“The 2019 Republican budget scraps any sense of responsibility to the American people and any obligation to being honest,” said Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. “Its repeal of the Affordable Care Act and extreme cuts to health care, retirement security, anti-poverty programs, education, infrastructure, and other critical investments are real and will inflict serious harm on American families.”
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Millions of Americans will suffer under the damn gop's damn plan to cut Social Security and Medicare. All of to give more unneeded tax cuts to big multi-national corporations and the very wealthy. Why?
Not a surprise, it's the GOP way, fuck seniors as long as they can get tax cuts for the wealthy...
I’d go for that. Balancing the budget without raising taxes is long overdue. Now let’s tackle the debt with spending cuts and we will be sitting pretty.
Of course. After all, the poor don't pay enough and the poor are reaping the most benefit, right?
Basically, the poor get money, not pay it in income taxes.
You don't pay attention.
By the way, the rich in many cases don't pay taxes either and get hundreds of thousands back in depreciations.
Never heard of the working poor, who don't get paid enough to live on? Meantime start cutting SS and Medicare and watch the fallout. You think state sponsored child abuse is bad, just wait til this gets in the mix. There aren't enough stupid seniors to drink that koolaid, they know SS and Medicare and don't want cuts, and that includes full on Trump supporters.
Pay attention? WTF are you bleating on about??
The poor pay little or no income taxes. Many MAKE money by filing----they get a "refund" of more than they paid in.
How does one single thing on your post refute the fact that they don't pay?
The whole point of those very irresponsibly-timed tax cuts was to intentionally increase the deficit so they could use it as an excuse to cut social spending.
It's the kind of stuff that wet dreams are made of for people like Paul Ryan.
It's also some downright evil shit.
Ryan should be ashamed of himself. I thought he was supposed to be a good Catholic
Really? I never would have guessed. He acts more like a disciple of Ayn Rand or von Mises if you ask me.
His name happens to be an anagram for Ayn R., something that probably gave him never ending goosebumps back in college when he was dreaming about getting rid of Medicare someday.
According to articles I've read over the years he even gives out copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and reportedly expects all of his interns to read it as well.
A biblical scholar is about the last thing in the world that I could be called, but even I'm aware of some of that New Testament stuff about caring for those in need, so I don't understand how he could be considered a good Catholic (i.e., Christian) if the main goal of his entire political career has been to toss some of 'the least among us' under a bus, instead of working to help them.
If Ryan and his GOPER cohorts pull this off, Ryan can finally smile as he exits the congress. He's got his 20 years with full pension and benefit. He also has employment already lined up that pays $1.1 million a year. Ann Rand Ryan will finally accomplish what he's spent his whole career on.
Will the GOPERS finally end Social Security and Medicare, replacing it with Trump Security and TrumpCare?
Why bother to end it when in less than 100 years it will be gone if left alone?
True. In 27 years the Allied victory of WW2 will be 100 years old and that too will be finally over, right?
WWII ended in the 1940's. It already IS over--and has been.
Are you okay? You seem fuzzy on history.
It ended in 1945. This 2018. Do the math. Or is the DeVos Syndrome in play here?
It isn't question of math.
WWII has been over. No amount of time passing will ever, ever, ever change that.
You're the one that started the 100 years...……...thing.
It wasn't me.
And actually, WW2 is not over. Nazis marched in the street at Charlottesville. Apparently, the work of war is not over.
Oh, wait....you were comparing me saying a government program left as is will run out of money with some bullshit about WWII?
WTF?
Jeeze, don't let a small handful of misfit, ignorant Nazis make you think the fucking world is about to end.
SMFH
You don't pay attention. Have a piece of watermelon and go to bed.
Hey, I'm not the one going Chicken Little over this.
What I think is really funny is the majority of GOP supporters would be raped by this, so I say do it! I mean, at this point you just have to laugh (plus, none of this will effect me so what do I really care?)
The GOP has been trying to kill all the New Deal and Great Society programs for a long time so it looks like they might finally get their wish. How else are they going to pay for tax cuts for the rich and a new Star Wars program?
Again, I am just laughing at the GOP majority, and if the GOP is ever successful I will honestly take pleasure in the suffring of their supporters. While they eat cat food I will be continuing to eat lobster
The "cut" to social security is actually a Barack Obama proposal to eliminate double dipping of unemployment and SSDI.
It's hilarious watching Democrats flip out over a Barack Obama proposal. They are manipulated so easily.
Nothing unusual here, repubs always and forever for the rich and their tax cuts and fuck the poor and middle class by taking away what we have earned all our working lives.