© The Associated Press / J. Scott ApplewhiteHouse Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., at podium, declares that he was 'disappointed' in President Obama's speech on a federal spending plan, Wednesday, April 13, 2011, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. From left are: House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., Ryan, Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va.
The House and Senate are ready to vote on legislation cutting almost $40 billion from the budget for the current year, but President Barack Obama and his GOP rivals are both eager to move on to multiyear fiscal plans that cut trillions instead of billions.
Lawmakers were to vote Thursday on a long-overdue spending measure funding the day-to-day budgets of federal agencies through September. Later in the day, Republicans dominating the House will launch debate on a 2012-and-beyond plan that promises to cut the long-term budget blueprint Obama laid out in February by more than $6 trillion.
Obama countered Wednesday with a new call to increase taxes on wealthier people and impose quicker cuts to Medicare, launching a roiling debate in Congress and the 2012 presidential campaign to come.
Obama fired a broadside at the long-term GOP plan, which calls for transforming the Medicare health program for the aged into a voucher-like system for people under the age of 55 and imposing stringent cuts on Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor and disabled, including people in nursing homes.
More immediate, however, is the 2011 spending measure. It combines more than $38 billion in cuts to domestic accounts with changes to benefit programs, like children's health care, that Congress' own economists say are illusory.
Obama said Wednesday that spending cuts and higher taxes alike must be part of any deficit-reduction plan, including an end to Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. He proposed an unspecified "debt failsafe" that would go into effect if Congress did not make sure the national debt would be falling by 2014 relative to the size of the overall economy.
