Details Of The Ryan-Murphy Budget Deal Reveal GOP Holds The Winning Hand
speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar…
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House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc) and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Oregon) have reached a two-year budget agreement guaranteed to make most Republicans and Democrats unhappy—with Democrats taking the bigger hit.
In the “good news†column, Democrats will not suffer any cuts to entitlements and there will be no tax increases to spoil Christmas for Republicans.
On the bad news side of the lever for the GOP, spending in 2014 will be about $45 billion more than what it would have been had this deal not been negotiated with the GOP also failing to accomplish any of the changes to Social Security and Medicare they so deeply desired.
The Democrats take a licking in a number of areas, including the denial of an extension to long-term unemployment benefits, no new taxes, no provision to delay the SGR cuts to physician Medicare payment rates, the requirement that federal employees will have to make a larger contribution to their pensions and the continuation of a large percentage of sequestration cuts.
It would also appear that little, if anything, was done to clean up special interest tax benefits.
While the White House has made some noises that extension of the long-term unemployment benefits could happen in some additional legislation down the road, there appears no interest on the part of House Republicans to make that happen.
There will, however, be some changes in sequestration as the agreement calls for replacing about half of the sequestration’s cuts to defense and non-defense discretionary spending in 2014 with 25 percent of the cuts coming in 2015. The result will be the retention of a large percentage of sequestration cuts continuing on.
As Ezra Klein notes, “Democrats flatly got beat on sequestration. Republicans are keeping — and increasing — the deficit reduction without ever giving up a dime in taxes. “
Despite the fact that the deal definitely leans in favor of the GOP positions, it is far from guaranteed that Republican Members of Congress will get behind the compromise and vote for the plan as key Republican and Tea Party organizations, including Heritage Action For America, Americans For Prosperity and FreedomWorks have already come out against the agreement.
The House is expected to vote first on the deal with the vote likely to come this Friday.
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Details Of The Ryan-Murphy Budget Deal Reveal GOP Holds The Winning Hand – Forbes.
