Washington – President Bush’s austere new budget proposal, with its bold effort to curb spending on Medicare and other popular programs, establishes an unusual and potentially risky election-year strategy for congressional Republicans.
In calling for tough fiscal medicine 10 months before midterm elections, Bush is betting that voters will accept painful measures in the name of controlling the overall growth of government.
That calculation aligns Bush with conservative lawmakers, especially in the House, who believe that an offensive against federal spending is critical to generating a large turnout from the Republican base in November’s election.
“I think the American people are more concerned about overspending than anything else,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “Politically, the right thing to do this year is also the popular thing to do, and that is to cut spending.”
But Bush’s push to reduce spending, while making permanent the sweeping tax cuts from his first term, creates excruciating choices for moderate Republicans in Congress caught between demands for party discipline and concerns that swing voters may recoil against parts of the plan, such as the Medicare reductions.
The plan also is likely to inspire more conflict between the parties than almost any domestic proposal Bush outlined in his State of the Union address last week.
Already, candidates in House and Senate races are sparring about the 2006 budget that finally passed Congress Wednesday without a single Democratic vote – a spending plan that reduces spending for student college loans and Medicaid, the program that benefits low-income people and the disabled.
Bush’s fiscal record has drawn criticism from both parties.
Conservatives grumble because total spending under his presidency has jumped from about $1.9 trillion in 2001 to an estimated $2.7 trillion this year.
Democrats complain that after inheriting three consecutive years of federal surpluses, Bush produced deficits totaling $1.5 trillion in the past four years – with an additional $354 billion in red ink forecast for 2007, even after the proposed new spending cuts.
While Democrats primarily blame Bush’s tax cuts for the reversal, Bush has proposed to dig out of the hole solely through spending reductions – a decision that has created the sharp conflict between the parties.
Bush’s 2007 budget plan may inspire even more anxiety among GOP legislators because it would squeeze most of its entitlement savings from Medicare, the giant federal system that funds health care for seniors.
The public backlash against the GOP’s effort to wring savings from Medicare while proposing tax cuts helped break the momentum of the new Republican congressional majority in 1995 and send Bill Clinton on his trajectory to re-election the next year.
And even before Bush unveiled his new budget, Republicans were nervous about their standing among seniors because of the opposition to Bush’s Social Security restructuring plan last year and widespread complaints over the implementation of the new prescription drug plan.
