House ready to OK GOP budget, rejects rival plans
Democrats said they, too, were eager to stanch deficits that now exceed $1 trillion annually. But they said it needed to be done in a more balanced way, with rich and poor alike sharing the load.
“It’s a path to greater prosperity - if you’re already wealthy,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, top Democrat on the Budget panel, mocking the “Path to Prosperity” title Ryan has given his document. “Because our Republican colleagues refuse to ask millionaires to contribute one cent to deficit reduction, they hit everyone and everything else.”
In a pair of preliminary votes expected Thursday, conservatives were offering their own proposal with deeper spending cuts and far faster deficit-reduction than the GOP plan, claiming to balance the budget in just five years. Democrats were pushing a measure featuring pumped-up spending for education and new tax credits for companies creating jobs and raising wages, while claiming savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, government waste and reductions in farm payments.
Both were destined to be defeated.
Underscoring the prickly partisan gulf over how to tackle the budget’s drastic imbalances, the House late Wednesday on a 382-38 vote easily shot down a compromise, bipartisan deficit-cutting plan by moderates of both parties that mingled tax increases with spending cuts.