WASHINGTON — House Republicans will preserve Medicare cuts that their presidential nominee loudly denounced last year and accept tax increases they sternly opposed just months ago in a new tax-and-spending blueprint that would bring the federal budget into balance by 2023, senior Republicans said Wednesday.
But the politically charged proposal, which emerged as the House easily passed legislation to keep the government financed through Sept. 30, is not expected to include workers currently 55 and over in major changes recommended for Medicare, after more moderate Republicans objected. The vote on the short-term spending bill was moved up because of a predicted storm that failed to meet expectations but that still shut down the federal government.
“Our goal is not to pass a budget and forget about it,” said Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee. “Our goal is to get a down payment on this problem for America. The value of a Republican majority ought to be, at the very least, to help delay a debt crisis from hitting this country.”
Although the House budget will not formally be unveiled until next Tuesday, the briefing by Mr. Ryan kicked off what could be a more orderly process of reviewing the nation’s fiscal picture after two years of chaotic clashes on the issue.
As the spending measure advanced, President Obama kept up his charm offensive with Republicans in pursuit of a bipartisan deal to reduce the deficit and undo the automatic spending cuts that took effect on Friday. He dined with nearly a dozen Senate Republicans at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington on Wednesday night, and he continued his phone calls, reaching out to Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, and speaking for some time to Mr. Ryan, the congressman confirmed. Mr. Obama is expected to invite him to lunch in the coming days.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of Mr. Obama’s fiercest critics in the Senate, who nonetheless accepted a dinner invitation from him, said: “I’ve always said I’m willing to work with anybody who’s willing to acknowledge the problem to solve it. Maybe that got noticed. I’ll certainly give the president the benefit of the doubt.”
Introduction of the House budget will be the first substantive step toward any bipartisan legislative deal on the deficit, but the path forward is narrow and steep. Mr. Ryan said his plan would bring the budget into balance in a decade, largely by sticking to the prescriptions of his last two budgets, which Mr. Obama made foils of his re-election campaign. Those include cutting spending on food stamps and social services, converting Medicare into a system that gives older people a fixed subsidy that would be used to buy insurance on the private market and turning Medicaid — the health care program for the poor — into block grants to states.
“I wouldn’t expect big surprises from us next week,” Mr. Ryan said.
But he made clear he would extend some olive branches, for the sake of comity but also in pursuit of his balanced budget. The tax increases on the affluent that Mr. Obama secured in January during the showdown over the so-called fiscal cliff will be reflected in the revenues Republicans expect to flow to the Treasury in their budget.
“Revenue went up significantly two months ago with the fiscal cliff deal,” Mr. Ryan said. “We’re not going to refight that fight.”
Also, Mr. Ryan offered tempered praise for the cuts to Medicare that helped finance the Affordable Care Act, cuts that he denounced as his party’s vice-presidential nominee but that will help him avoid subjecting people older than 55 to his Medicare changes. “Because of Obamacare, you have — for a moment in time — lower Medicare spending rates,” he said.
With higher taxes, Medicare cuts and an unexpected slowdown in health care spending, budget experts say the House budget needs only about $100 billion in additional cuts toward the end of the decade.
In Mr. Ryan’s last two budgets, he also banked the $716 billion in Medicare cuts for the health law for deficit reduction, but when the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, attacked the president for those cuts and pledged to restore that money, Mr. Ryan fell in line.
“Paul Ryan and I will restore those dollars to our seniors and to Medicare,” Mr. Romney said last October at a campaign appearance in Henderson, Nev., with Mr. Ryan at his side.
But Mr. Ryan had good reason to drop that pledge. He needed the money. As budget chairman he had argued that to get the budget to balance, he needed to have Medicare savings go into force earlier, even if that meant dropping the pledge to shield those 55 and over.
Date: March 6, 2013