(NEW YORK) MintPress — The Republican-controlled House of Representatives may have passed the so-called “reconciliation budget” on Thursday, but it’s hardly conciliatory if you ask Congressional Democrats.
“I am so sick and tired of the demonization of programs that benefit poor people in this country, especially the [food stamp] program,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) during the floor debate.
The plan, which came out of the House Budget Committee headed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would cut $83 billion in federal retirement benefits, save $49 billion by capping medical suits, cut about $48 billion from Medicaid programs and cut food aid by more than $36 billion.
“This is not some extravagant, overly generous benefit,” McGovern continued. “Rather than cutting waste in the Pentagon budget, which we all know exists, you protect the Pentagon budget. You know, rather than going after subsidies for oil companies and going after billionaire tax breaks, you protect all that.”
House Republicans want their proposal to replace automatic cuts scheduled to take effect in January — the outcome of last year’s failure of a budget-cutting super committee to agree on a plan to reduce the national deficit— that will fall heavily on the military.
The GOP plan passed 218 to 199, with 16 Republicans and all Democrats voting against it.
Stealing from the poor to give to the rich
“How do we reconcile more money for bombs while cutting money for bread?” asked Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). “The real deficit that we are dealing with her is a moral deficit, and it’s time that we face the truth.”
A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report reveals that, under the House plan, some 22 million households with children would lose aid to buy food, 300,000 kids would be cut from school lunch programs, and 300,000 young people would lose health insurance.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asserted that Republicans “won’t ask one penny more from people making over $1 million a year to help us reduce our deficit, not one penny.” He continued, “The math is pretty simple after that. Because you ask nothing of them, your budget whacks everyone else.”
Ryan’s rebuttal
Rep. Ryan maintains that the proposed cuts are about helping the poor by reforming inefficient programs. “Here’s the problem: These efforts aren’t working,” he said. The fact that one in six Americans today are in poverty, he claimed, is the result of a growing culture of dependency.
That stance has drawn harsh criticism from many religious leaders. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently entered the fray. In letters to Congress, it urged legislators to resist the proposed cuts in hunger and nutrition programs at home and abroad, saying that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.”
The Republicans continue to shoot back, arguing that there is a spending rather than a revenue problem. “The fact is that this administration has spent us into the Stone Age and added to our deficit approximately $1 trillion a year since they came into office,” charged Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.).
“My friends on the other side of the aisle have demagogued this reconciliation bill beyond recognition,” he said. “The face, however, remains that this bill reduces the deficit not by some parade of horribles, but by stopping fraud, eliminating government slush funds and duplicative programs, and controlling runaway federal spending.”
Forging ahead
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already rejected the House plan, and President Obama has threatened to veto it.
But the bill, and the increasingly contentious debate over social welfare versus military spending, is likely to remain a key issue in the 2012 race for both the White House and both houses of Congress.