11-11-05,10:14am
Nov. 10—After days of backroom arm-twisting to gain enough votes to cut more than $50 billion from vital working family programs, Republican leaders in the U.S. House postponed action on the bill Nov. 10 because they failed to find the votes to win.
Earlier that day, a $70 billion package of tax cuts for the wealthy, promoted by congressional leaders and the Bush administration, suffered a similar setback in the Senate Finance Committee. Republican leaders, unable to secure enough votes on the 11-Republican, nine-Democrat panel to move the bill to the full Senate, postponed the vote on the tax cuts.
Earlier, all nine Democrats on the committee and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) had vowed to oppose the tax cuts. Snowe said she opposed the measure as fiscally unwise and an unfair boost to the affluent as Congress cuts programs for the poor. Last week, the Senate passed some $35 billion in spending cuts.
But House leaders and the Bush administration are expected to continue their deal-making to pass the budget cuts when Congress returns from its Veterans Day recess.
The Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders claimed huge cuts in working family programs are needed to reduce the federal deficit and pay for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.
But another Republican senator, George Voinovich (Ohio), didn’t buy that spin. “I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending last week to help achieve deficit reductions we can now then turn around two weeks later to provide tax cuts that exceed the reduction in spending. That is beyond me, and I am sure the American people,” he said.
Health Care, Children, Education Targeted
Like the Senate bill, the House spending cut legislation is aimed mainly at programs that benefit workers and the poor, including hurricane survivors.
The House bill includes a $10 billion cut in Medicaid health services for poor children and long-term care patients and would increase the costs of prescription drugs for beneficiaries. It also would slash some $14 billion from student aid programs, which would raise the cost of education for students and their families with increased student loan interest rates and fees.
The House budget cuts also would take some $5 billion from child support enforcement, $1.3 billion from foster care and Social Security disability payments and $844 million from food stamps.
