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House adopts compromise GOP budget targeting Obamacare

 
Published May 1, 2015

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday adopted a compromise GOP budget that promises to speed repeal of the President Barack Obama's health care law while giving the Pentagon an additional $38 billion next year.

The 226-197 vote sends the non-binding budget plan to the Senate for a vote next week. It promises to balance the budget in nine years with more than $5 trillion in spending cuts, though Republicans make clear they aren't interested in actually imposing controversial cuts to programs like Medicare, food stamps, Pell Grants or the traditional Medicaid program with follow-up legislation.

Instead, the House-Senate budget framework increases spending in the near term by padding war accounts by almost $40 billion next year. And Senate Republicans skittish over politically dangerous cuts to Medicare blocked a House move that would give subsidies to future retirees to purchase health insurance on the open market instead of a guaranteed package of Medicare coverage.

Under Washington's arcane budget process, lawmakers first adopt a budget that's essentially a visionary document and follow it up with binding legislation to set agency budgets, cut or raise taxes, and make changes to so-called mandatory programs like Medicare and food stamps, whose budgets run as if on autopilot.