Washington – House Republicans eked out a slim victory on a $39.5 billion budget-cutting package on Wednesday. The vote helped President Bush deliver on his promise to rein in federal spending while revealing anxiety within the Republican Party over cutting social welfare programs in an election year.
The measure represents the first major effort by lawmakers since 1997 to cut the growth of so-called entitlement programs, including student loans, crop subsidies and Medicaid, in which spending is determined by eligibility criteria.
It passed 216-214, with 13 Republicans voting against. The Senate, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the decisive vote, had approved the spending cuts in December. The bill now goes to the White House for Bush’s signature.
Colorado’s House delegation split along party lines, with Democrats Diana DeGette of Denver, John Salazar of Manassas and Mark Udall of Eldorado Springs voting against the measure, and Republicans Bob Beauprez of Arvada, Joel Hefley of Colorado Springs, Marilyn Musgrave of Fort Morgan and Tom Tancredo of Littleton voting for it.
Coming on the heels of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, the vote was a critical test of Bush’s ability to hold his fractured party together. The House also voted Wednesday to extend the broad anti-terrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act until March 10, giving House and Senate negotiators time to settle differences on another of Bush’s priorities, a measure to revamp the Patriot Act and make it permanent.
The spending bill will achieve savings of $6.4 billion in Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly, through a variety of changes that include higher premiums for all beneficiaries, with steeper increases for the more affluent and a freeze in payments to home health-care providers. In the Medicaid health-care program for the poor and disabled, $4.8 billion will be saved by increasing co-payments, reducing payments for prescription drugs, and tightening rules on assets transfers for nursing-home eligibility.
After years of cutting into social programs, the budget vote spotlighted how difficult it will be for Bush to press ahead with even deeper cuts this year. While the bill has strong appeal to the fiscal conservatives who make up the president’s Republican base, it makes party moderates nervous – so much so that four switched their votes to oppose the measure after intensive lobbying from advocacy groups over the holiday break.
Republican leaders, determined to see the measure pass even as they knew it would make life tough for their members, waged their own intense lobbying campaign. Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip and acting majority leader, could be seen on the House floor deep in conversation with his colleagues as the roll was being called, apparently counting votes until the last minute so he could determine which moderates could be released to vote no.