House calls for cuts in Medicare, food stamps

updated 9:51 a.m. ET Nov. 4, 2005

WASHINGTON - A battle over deep cuts to popular federal programs like Medicaid and food stamps promises to intensify next week in the House despite relatively smooth sailing in the Senate. On Thursday, the Senate passed a measure calling for mild cuts in the health care programs for the elderly, poor and disabled, while leaving the food stamp program untouched.

For now, the House bill generates $54 billion in savings, in part by imposing new fees on Medicaid patients, eliminating about 300,000 people from food stamp rolls and cutting enforcement funds against parents who duck child support.

"Who bears the burden of the cuts made by this bill?" said Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "Single mothers seeking child support from deadbeat dads. Students struggling to pay loans for their college education. Foster children. The sick and poor whose only access to health coverage is Medicaid, or whose nutrition depends on food stamps."

Republicans say the debate is an important moment for their party, which gained control of Congress 11 years ago with promises to balance the budget.

Senate would allow arctic refuge drilling
The Senate bill, which passed 52-47, also would permit exploratory oil drilling in the Alaskan refuge, prompting five Republicans in the GOP-controlled chamber to vote against the bill.

An earlier vote to extend a 44-year-old drilling ban in the refuge failed, 51-48.

The Senate bill is estimated to trim $36 billion, or 2 percent, from budget deficits forecast at $1.6 trillion over five years.

The cuts total $6 billion for the plan's first year, with deficits predicted to exceed $300 billion.

A House plan approved by a key committee Thursday cuts more deeply across a broader range of social programs.

Republican moderates who don't like the cuts say it makes even less sense to vote on them if it's clear the Senate won't go along.

To ease passage next week, House GOP leaders may drop a provision that would allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the intention of revisiting it in final compromise talks with the Senate.

Fiscal heartburn for Republicans
The return of intractable deficits and surging spending has caused heartburn for many Republicans over their record on holding the line on spending and addressing budget deficits.

The long-planned budget bills would make the first cuts to mandatory programs since 1997.

These programs account for 55 percent of the budget and include Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies and student loan subsidies.

"This is a major step forward," said GOP Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. "It is a step towards fiscal responsibility and it is a reflection of the Republican Congress' commitment to pursue the path of fiscal responsibility."

The House Budget Committee approved the bill Thursday on a party-line vote.

But so many GOP lawmakers are unhappy with the bill that Republican leaders acknowledge it will have to be reworked before a final vote in the full House next week.

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