WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans controlling Congress Wednesday unveiled a budget plan for the upcoming year and beyond, setting up a confrontation with President Barack Obama over his signature health care law and his vow to boost spending on domestic programs like transportation and education.
House-Senate negotiators on the sweeping – but nonbinding – budget plan sealed agreement Wednesday. The 10-year balanced budget plan calls upon lawmakers to repeal Obama’s health care law while enacting major curbs on safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. It would cut future-year budgets for domestic agencies below already tight spending “caps” that the White House vows to dismantle.
Separately, the House took up a normally bipartisan bill funding veterans’ programs, but the measure ran into unusual opposition from Democrats despite increases of almost 6 percent above current levels for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The White House promises to veto the veterans’ bill in protest of unrelated GOP plans to boost the Pentagon’s budget while ignoring pleas to increase domestic programs.
The broader 10-year budget plan promised to cut federal spending projected at almost $50 trillion over the coming decade by more than $5 trillion, with the bulk of the cuts coming from federal health care programs.