Senate votes down Paul Ryan budget plan, 57-40
By DAVID ROGERS | 5/25/11 5:56 PM EDT
With five Republicans joining Democrats in opposition, the Senate easily rejected a House-passed budget plan Wednesday calling for deep cuts in domestic appropriations and major restructuring of Medicare, the government-backed healthcare program for the elderly.
The 57-40 roll call proved more for show than substance but still stung for GOP leaders, coming less than 24 hours after the same Medicare issue figured prominently in the upset of a Republican candidate in a special House election in a conservative upstate New York district.
In a tell-tale sign of trouble ahead, there were significantly more defections among GOP moderates than in a similar partisan show vote in March on an earlier House Republican budget initiative focused on discretionary spending cuts.
In both cases, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a hero of the tea party movement, voted in opposition because the spending cuts did not go far enough in his opinion. But the big newcomers this time were all moderates: Maine’s two Republicans, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski—all of whom had been loyal in March.
At the same time, the Medicare controversy made it impossible to win over any Democratic moderates, despite their unhappiness with the higher spending levels of President Barack Obama’s own budget.
Typical was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) who castigated the House Republican plan for ending Medicare “as we know it” and threatening to double the out-of-pocket costs for New Hampshire seniors in the future. But minutes later she joined in voting against Obama plan, saying that it fell short of making the reforms needed to address the nation’s fiscal problems.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55721.html#ixzz1NQMRGUtY
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