House Republican Leaders Push Budget-Cut

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are striving to pass a deficit reduction bill to curb spending on Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies. On a parallel track they are succeeding in their drive to freeze many agency budgets funded through annual spending bills.

The two-pronged effort was coming to a head as early as Thursday. Votes loomed on a budget-cut plan that is a pillar of the GOP's agenda as well as on a separate spending bill cutting money below last year's levels for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.
....
The bill would trim about $50 billion over five years from programs like Medicaid whose budgets increase automatically every year. The proposed savings are modest considering the $14 trillion the government is set to spend during the five-year period.
....
GOP leaders early Thursday made modest changes to the bill in an attempt to ease moderates' concerns. Dropped from the measure is a proposal raising copayments from $3 to $5 for the very poorest Medicaid beneficiaries and a provision that would have denied free school lunches to about 40,000 children whose parents would lose their food stamps. A provision denying Medicaid nursing home benefits to people with home equity of $500,000 would be modified by raising the cap to $750,000.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111700156.html

[stray cat]

1. Starving children to give tax breaks to billionaires.

[gizmo1979]

2. What about student loans?

College isn't getting any cheaper!They want everyone stupid and poor.

[barb162]

3. Medicaid? That's the last place to cut? Cut the Congress

subsidized haircuts, lunches and their damned medical first