House passes sweeping GOP budget cuts, reforms
Alan Silverleib
CNN
Washington (CNN) - The House of Representatives passed the Republican leadership's 2012 budget proposal Friday, approving a blueprint for cutting federal deficits by roughly $4.4 trillion over the next decade while radically overhauling Medicare and Medicaid - two popular entitlement programs long considered politically untouchable.
The bill passed 235-193 in a near party-line vote. Every Democrat opposed the measure.
The measure, which is bitterly opposed by President Barack Obama, has virtually no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate.
It is time "to get serious about the long-term crisis our country is facing," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner said he was "hopeful the president will take his job as seriously as we're taking ours."
Republicans "are out to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," charged Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut. This "is a time to draw a line in the sand and fight. ... We will keep their hands off of Medicare and the sacred contract that we have with the people we are sworn to serve."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the plan "places the burden of debt reduction on those who can least afford it (and) ends Medicare as we know it."
Several spectators were forcibly removed from the House gallery shortly before the vote for yelling and generally disrupting the chamber's proceedings.
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Filed under: 360° Radar • 360º Follow |
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Where I come from we don't abuse the elderly. The GOP's efforts to eliminate medicare to protect the wealth of the rich is just plain fowl.
There are 3 types of taxes: current taxes, inflation & deficit spending which is a hidden tax. When inflation comes it hurts those on fixed incomes and makes them more dependent on government programs
Raise everyone's taxes until tax revenue equals = expenses and then everyone will demand a balanced budget. We must stop stealing from our grandchildren.
Larson us the biggest loudmouth in the CT delegation. Nothing is a problem because it can be solved with a tax increase. He is not interested in balancing a budget or making the US great. But he keeps getting elected in this dumb state who put all Democrats in office in November.
Rep Ryan is a opportunist and a charlatan.How in the world did a state elect Rep Ryan to represent them...? I will never vote for a republican again!
We need new President