Senate, House Pass Budget Reconciliation Bills
The House and Senate on Thursday approved similar $3 trillion fiscal year 2009 budget resolutions (H. Con. Res. 312 and S. Con. Res. 70) that would increase spending for health care and other domestic programs and "would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush," the AP/Houston Chronicle reports (Taylor, AP/Houston Chronicle, 3/14).
The House budget resolution, which passed on a 212-207 vote, exceeds the amount that Bush requested for discretionary domestic spending by $25.4 billion, and the Senate budget resolution, which passed on a 51-44 vote, exceeds the amount that he requested by $21.8 billion (Clarke/Higa, CQ Today, 3/13). In addition, both budget resolutions do not include $196 billion in spending reductions for Medicare and Medicaid that Bush has requested (Taylor, AP/Houston Chronicle, 3/13).
The House budget resolution directs the House Ways and Means Committee to report a reconciliation bill that over six years would produce $750 million in savings from mandatory programs, most likely from Medicare (CQ Today, 3/13). Prior to passage of the Senate budget resolution, the Senate voted 95-4 to approve an amendment sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that would increase funds for NIH by $2.1 billion (CQ HealthBeat, 3/13). Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) returned to Washington to vote on the Senate budget resolution (AP/Houston Chronicle, 3/14).
According to CQ Today, House and Senate Republicans "assailed the Democratic budgets, charging that they called for too much spending on domestic programs, failed to curb the growth of Medicare and other costly entitlement programs and would lead to tax increases to millions of Americans" (CQ Today, 3/13).
