(fwd) Must Read: GOP plan to slash all benefits, only 51 votes needed to pass

[Guest guest]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/24/gop_eyes_plan

_to_secure_benefit_cuts/

 

An alarming article . If Bush can unilaterally slash all benefits,

without Democrats being able to even slow it down, then we really are in big

trouble. If they bundle all these " entitlement " cuts into a " reconciliation

bill, " then it only takes 51 votes to pass, thus unless a lot of Republicans

jump ship, the benefit slashes will go through in spite of the best efforts of

Democrats. I do believe the GOP will resort to this tactic because they can't

get 100% of their members on board plus enough Democrats to overcome a

filibuster and the 60 votes needed. -----

Bush is DETERMINED to DESTROY America's middle-class and turn us into

" grateful " peons, scrambling for crumbs from the tables of the rich.

 

Bush may not be able to get his " piratization " plan for Social Security

going, so he will just SLASH ALL " entitlement " programs and be done

with it.

 

Bush HATES anything that helps the middle-class monetarily.

 

Soon, America will look like France did in the days before the French

revolution: three percent of the country was obscenely wealthy and the

rest were beggars, dressed in rags. That's Bush's view of Utopia.

 

This Republican plot is FRIGHTENING, because they can pass this

legislation without ANY Democratic votes; the Republicans HAVE the votes

to destroy Social Security (including aid to widows, orphans, and the

disabled), Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants, veterans'

benefits,.etc...etc...etc.

 

------

 

*GOP eyes plan to secure benefit cuts: Procedure would stymie Democrats*

 

by Joel Havemann,

Los Angeles Times

January 24, 2005

 

<< WASHINGTON -- The battleground of efforts to control the federal

deficit is shifting to Social Security, Medicare, and the other giant

benefit programs that account for a growing share of spending.

 

President Bush, in the fiscal 2006 budget that he is to present to

Congress on Feb. 7, is expected to resurrect a failed proposal from last

year that calls for any increases in benefit programs to be offset by

decreases of equal size from other benefit programs.

 

But congressional Republicans may try to get out ahead of him. Although

lawmakers have no firm targets for benefit cuts, at least one

influential senator -- Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Budget Committee

chairman -- is laying plans to institute a procedure that would make it

harder for Democrats to block benefit cuts.

 

Gregg said he believed lawmakers are more serious about deficit

reduction than at any time in recent years, because they have heard an

earful from voters about runaway red ink.

 

" This is going back to our roots as the Republican Party, " Gregg said.

" A lot of the people who support us expect us to be fiscally

responsible. "

 

Such talk has advocates for those who rely on the benefits programs on

edge. " It is a serious threat, " said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at

the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. " This is going to be

a year when people like us are going to be on the defensive. "

 

The procedure favored by Gregg has not been used since 1997. It has the

support of the House Budget Committee chairman, Jim Nussle, Republican

of Iowa, according to committee communications director Sean Spicer.

Every year, Gregg's committee prepares a budget resolution that sets a

limit on overall spending and tells other Senate committees how much

they can spend on the various programs under their jurisdiction.

 

Gregg said he planned to attach language to this year's budget

resolution instructing the committees with jurisdiction over some of the

entitlement programs to cut them. The committees' cutbacks would be

packaged in a single " reconciliation " bill, so-called because it

reconciles those spending plans with the budget resolution.

 

The reconciliation procedure could make a big difference in what

legislation Congress approves this year.

 

Senate Democrats can filibuster ordinary legislation, and the Senate's

55 Republicans are not enough to produce the 60 votes necessary to break

a filibuster and force legislation to a vote. But congressional budget

rules dictate that a reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered.

 

All Republicans need are 51 of the 100 senators, a simple majority, to

pass a reconciliation bill. Gregg's plan would have the effect of

allowing senators to approve budget cuts with a simple majority.

 

The reconciliation maneuver has been in mothballs since 1997, when

lawmakers used it to produce a bill to save $160 billion over the

following five years. The cuts helped usher in four years of budget

surpluses.

 

Since then, the deficit has ballooned, to $412 billion last year. Gregg,

who is new to the Budget Committee's chairmanship this year, said the

chief culprit is the growth of the giant " entitlement " programs --

so-called because they entitle people to federal benefits according to

their age, income, or some other characteristic.

 

A quick glance at the budget numbers shows why entitlements loom so

large. The biggest, Social Security, will entitle senior citizens and

the disabled this year to checks totaling about $510 billion, fully

one-fifth of the federal budget. Medicare benefits for the same groups

will cost an additional $325 billion.

 

Compared to that, the programs that Congress can enlarge or reduce

annually in its regular spending bills are very small. Economic

development grants to poor communities, a traditional target of budget

cutters, will cost an estimated $4.6 billion this year. The government

will spend about $1.2 billion this year to subsidize passenger railroad

travel on Amtrak.

 

But the bigger a program is, the more people benefit from it -- and have

a stake in keeping it intact. Entitlement programs will consume about $6

of every $10 the government spends. By contrast, " discretionary "

domestic spending, excluding defense, accounts for less than $2.

 

Congress has a long history of ineffectiveness when it comes to dealing

with entitlements.

 

In 1985, it passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which mandated a

balanced budget by 1991 (later pushed back to 1993). Across-the-board

spending cuts were supposed to be triggered if annual deficits exceeded

targets along the way.

 

Twice the spending cuts loomed, and twice they were averted. In 1989,

former President Bush signed a spending cut order, but it was rendered

moot when Congress passed a deficit-reduction package.

 

In 1990, rather than face a round of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings cuts,

Congress replaced the law with new procedures.

 

Every time the new rules would have applied, Congress waived them, and

they expired in 2002. >>

 

 

 

 

 

 

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