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Politico...
Senate launches bid
to out-cut House
By David Rogers
2/4/11
House Republicans sketched out tens of billions in appropriations cuts
Thursday, even as White House Budget Director Jacob Lew met with Senate
Democrats amid increased pressure to resurrect major elements of last
year’s presidential debt commission report.
The GOP’s ambitious goal in the House is to roll back foreign aid and
domestic spending to 2008 levels, but the leadership now admits that
its net savings amount to just $32 billion from 2010 levels once new
defense spending is added to the equation.
The State Department, transportation, housing, education and
health-related programs would be severely affected by what amounts to a
9 percent cut in annual spending — compressed into just seven months.
But the end result is too small for many tea party conservatives, and
when matched against the $1.5 trillion deficit projected for 2011, the
numbers show the limits of a budget strategy so narrowly focused on one
segment of appropriations.
Those limits give added impetus now to a bipartisan effort in the
Senate to craft a larger, 10-year deficit reduction plan that would
include tax and entitlement reform. Senate allies of House Speaker John
Boehner (R-Ohio) have participated in the talks, and the goal is to
show enough strength to bring both the speaker and President Barack
Obama to the table.
Read the full story at Politico
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