WASHINGTON -- Republicans are using their new congressional majorities to push conservative budgets through the House and Senate, aiming to eliminate deficits by overturning President Barack Obama's health care law and slashing safety-net programs for the poor.
The House passed its version on a party-line vote of 228-199 on Wednesday, and officials said the Senate was preparing to follow suit late Thursday or early today.
As debate began Thursday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lauded a "balanced budget which focuses on growth, common sense and the middle class."
"It isn't perfect, but it does represent honest compromise and the promise of a better tomorrow," McConnell said on the floor.
Democrats were left protesting that the budget used shady accounting to arrive at its savings while cutting deeply into Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, student loans and other programs.
"It really is a budget that is insensitive and unaware of the reality of life for working families, and that is sad," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Both houses' budgets call for $5 trillion in deficit reduction, increased defense spending and major transformations in both the tax code and Medicare.
A final vote in the Senate was to follow votes on numerous amendments offered from both sides on topics as disparate as Iran sanctions, water rights, Common Core education standards, paid sick leave, community college and discrimination against pregnant workers.
More than 600 amendments had been filed as of Thursday morning, some aimed at creating tough calls for Republicans.
"We'll start voting early this afternoon and we'll keep voting until we're exhausted," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., chairman of the Budget Committee. "That's the way we do it in the Senate."
Senate Republicans anticipated success in getting their budget through, thanks to special rules that require a simple majority vote for the document instead of the 60 votes margin needed to end debate and advance most legislation in the 100-seat Senate.
The House and Senate budgets themselves are nonbinding and do not require a presidential signature. Once each chamber passes its version, the House and Senate will try to agree on a common plan, something that last happened in 2009. Then lawmakers will draft separate legislation to implement the programs.
Both budget plans would squeeze trillions by undoing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and by cutting Medicaid and other programs, but there are differences between the plans. House Republicans would convert Medicare into a voucherlike program, while Senate Republicans, who must defend their newly won majority in 2016, omitted such an approach.
Both blueprints envisioned an overhaul of the tax code, with details to be determined later.
Red ink was projected to give way to a small surplus in 2024 in the House plan, and one year later under the Senate's scenario, though the budgets counted tax revenue from the health care law while eliminating the law.
Both the House and Senate versions matched the defense spending number of $612 billion from Obama's budget, though only after committee-level maneuvering and reliance on overseas operations accounts that don't have to be offset. Still, some defense hawks in the Senate were calling for more.
The prospect of sending Obama legislation to repeal the health care law contributed to the unusual degree of unity among House conservatives. Without a budget in place, they noted, the repeal measure would not have special protection against a Senate filibuster -- and would not reach the White House.
A Section on 03/27/2015