Senate Panel Drops Spending Cuts

[cal04]

The Senate will drop President Bush's proposals for new tax cuts and politically painful cuts to Medicare and instead revisit the battle over allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as it takes up its budget plan for
next year. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said Tuesday that after shepherding through a five-year, $39 billion benefit cut bill last year, he didn't have the votes for a second round of cuts to federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies.

Gregg is expected to reveal his budget blueprint Wednesday and said he hopes to bring it to a committee vote Thursday with floor debate possible next week. Separately, House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Tuesday that a companion House budget plan is on hold while GOP leaders try to work out compromises on various proposals to overhaul the budget process, such as earmark "reform" and a new proposal to create a modified line-item veto power for Bush.

For his part, Gregg has opted for what he calls a "vanilla exercise" that drops most but not all of Bush's controversial proposals as nonstarters in a difficult election-year environment. Gregg has also said he will not press for a new round of tax cuts like Bush's plan to expand health savings accounts or make the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent. While his budget will reflect many of Bush's cuts for presentation purposes, it won't award filibuster-proof protection to legislation to actually enact them into law.

Instead, under pressure from Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Sen. Ted Stevens (news, bio, voting record), R-Alaska, Gregg has drafted a plan that would allow drilling in Alaska's coastal plain, known as ANWR, to advance under fast-track budget rules that block Democrats from filibustering the proposal to death as they did last year. The ANWR gambit is a long shot. Last year's effort failed because House Republican opponents of drilling in the pristine wildlife reserve teamed up with Democratic opponents of GOP budget cuts to force the Arctic drilling proposal out of last year's budget cut bill.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060307/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget_1

[ixion]

1. here's a group of people who are simply out of ideas

and yet we allow them to lead us right off the edge. :crazy:

[AndyA]

2. Repug slogan for November elections:

VOTE REPUBLICAN IN 2006:
WE HAVE NOTHING NEW TO REPORT