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Senate's budget erases Bush's cuts

The US Senate delivered a rebuff to President George W. Bush and its own Republican leaders by passing a US$2.6 trillion budget erasing his plans for cutting Medicaid, community development and school aid.

Foreshadowing clashes ahead, the House approved its own fiscal outline relying on far deeper reductions in Medicaid and other domestic programs. After its 218 votes to 214 votes passage, top House Republicans chided the other chamber for not clamping down more on spending at a time of massive federal deficits.

"I'm not real pleased with what I'm hearing the Senate say" with its votes on spending, said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, a Republican from Iowa.

Before its 51 votes to 49 votes approval of the budget, the Senate, in a surprise move, voted to practically double the budget's tax cuts to US$134 billion over the next five years. That is even more than Bush and the more conservative House have sought.

The Senate marched through dozens of amendments on Thursday aimed at boosting spending, rejecting many but agreeing to add funds for everything from anti-AIDS efforts to water projects.

Senators voted to restore money Bush proposed cutting from education and local police, fire and emergency workers. They also voted to kill Bush's plan to combine community-development block grants with dozens of other programs and cutting them by about US$2 billion.

Overall, the tax cuts and spending increases the Senate approved during Thursday's votes would cost more than US$80 billion over the next five years.

It was unclear whether the Senate's larger tax cut, or the other changes, will survive in the eventual House-Senate compromise budget. The tax cut was approved by 55 votes to 45.

The budget sets overall tax and spending targets to guide Congress as it writes bills later in the year that make actual changes in programs and tax laws. That means some policies the budget suggests may never be enacted, though the votes are often precursors for what lawmakers will eventually do.

In the Senate's watershed 52 to 48 roll call, a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans voted to yank all US$14 billion in proposed five-year cuts from Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled.

Those reductions, 1 percent of expected Medicaid spending over the period, are the keystone of plans by Bush and Republican congressional leaders to start controlling federal deficits that surged to a record US$412 billion last year and show little sign of abating.

Bush proposed US$8.5 billion in five-year Medicaid savings, while the House would rely on up to US$20 billion in reductions from the program.

Overall, Bush has proposed US$51 billion in five-year savings from benefit programs, including farm, veterans and student loans.
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