The ten year blueprint for taxes and spending the House Republicans have proposed could balance the federal budget, even promising a surplus by 2024. Without relying on tax increases, the budget writers were forced to balance the budget while increasing military spending. Nearly $40 billion in “emergency” war funding was added to the defense budget for next year, raising military spending without breaking caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The budget will also make “the Pell Grant program permanently sustainable.”
But it comes at a price: the budget demands the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including the tax increases to finance it. Spending on Medicaid may fall $913 billion over ten years once the health program is turned to block grants to the states, but as House Republicans put it, “Our budget realigns the relationship the federal government has with states and local communities by respecting and restoring the principle of federalism.” Billions would also be cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. Domestic programs would be cut $519 billion below the already restrictive caps set in 2011. White House officials estimated that 37 million people would lose health insurance between the Affordable Care Act repeal and Medicaid cuts; this more than doubles the ranks of the uninsured.
“What we’re seeing right now is a failure to invest in education, infrastructure, research and national defense. All the things that we need to grow, need to create jobs, to stay at the forefront of innovation and to keep our country safe,” President Obama commented.
I believe that a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act would benefit the Americans more than a raise in military spending. In addition, I am uncertain that the budget will be balanced in such a short amount of time, and that it would require more than ten years to do so. What do you think? How do you feel about the changes in the budget? How will the American citizens be affected by these changes?
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/us/politics/house-republican-budget-overhauls-medicare-and-repeals-the-health-law.html
7 comments:
Nancy,
When it comes to what Congress decides, it is always hard to agree with every decision made. As we learned in class, a lot of compromising goes on in order to produce a final product more than half of the Congressional members can agree with.
When it comes down to it, the United States is highly involved in conflicts overseas, most well-known and recent would probably have to be launching missiles at ISIS. The United States Congress came to a dilemma on how they should spend the money in order to best benefit the country. Obviously, this type of decision must be a hard one to make. Without a doubt, the military definitely needed an increase in spending in order to best protect our country from potential threats overseas. With the forty billion dollar emergency war funds created for defense purposes, it shows that the U.S. is not going to go into other countries to prove a point, they are only going to use this money in order to defend the American citizen. And by the government not breaking the 2011 Budget Control Act, it further shows how this increase is deemed necessary in times of threats.
When the Affordable Care Act came into play, many people’s insurance became very altered, and some loved it, and some hated it. I honestly do believe it made some people’s lives easier, but it did make some people’s lives harder when it came to the insurance. I do agree with the Republicans in the notion that the last thing they wanted to do was increase taxes in order to pay for the defense spending, but I do not think they needed to cut so much. By cutting money previously issued to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Affordable Care Act, and various other domestic programs, I do think it will hurt our country and a vast majority of the population. Without a doubt, I do agree that it is wise to take precaution when it comes to the defense of the United States, but maybe forty billion dollars is a bit much. By taking millions of dollars away from helping millions of people who are suffering, who knows what kind of panic and poverty that will cause. The people need to know that their government is trying to help them, and yes the government is protecting them by increasing the military spending, but the government should not be doing so by drastically decreasing the money spent on programs to help those who are suffering. It is definitely hard to find a balance in a country where half the population wants one thing, and the other half wants the exact opposite. However, hopefully the Congressional lawmakers will do what they feel will benefit the nation as a whole in the most rewarding way.
I think that this proposed budget by the Republicans is something that has the possibility to be very affective. The fact that they plan to be able to do this without raising taxes is something that is positive for a vast amount of the population of the United States.
When it comes to the proposal to add 40 billion dollars in emergency funding to the military, I think that this is a very positive thing. These funds are extremely important to every person in the country because we need a big military in order to keep our people safe. Also, the United States is known as the preserver of peace in the world and we need the military funds in order to fight groups such as ISIS who are trying to create chaos, even if they aren't doing it n the United States. I think that this topic is something that everybody can agree on for the most part because it is something that everybody needs in order to keep our country and our world safe.
When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, I think that this could be a positive thing as well. As Sammy said, there were some people who were positively affected by the Affordable Care Act and there were some who were negatively affected by it. I am personally against most of the things that make up the ACA. I feel as though there are many parts of the Act that are not as influential and affective as they should be. There are simply some things that the government has to stay away from. There will never be a successful government that tries to help everybody, because it is simple something that cannot be done. We need to leave the essential parts of the Affordable Care Act, but we need to take out and revise numerous parts.
Overall, I think that this proposal by the Republicans has a pretty good amount of promise and isn't crazy. There will have to be some compromise, but overall I think the basic parts of this are a positive thing.
While our nation definately needs a balanced budget, I do not believe that cutting the Affordable Care Act is the right way to go. Not only is it a strong show of partisanship over compromise, but, as you mentioned, Nancy, such a blow would cause 37 million people to lose access to health insurance. To justify such a loss the proposal would need a clear plan, but in reality this budget is based on vague accounting. While it is easy to see that cutting the Act outright along with its expansion of Medicare would save the government a large sum by the end of 10 years, this plan does not account for the fact that the law was not merely designed to cost the country but also to benefit it by reducing the deficit. It does so by making its own substantial cuts to the Medicare program while also raising a series of new taxes on wages, health insurance, and medical devices. Following this trend, safe projections show that the law’s changes will result in saving $700 billion in Medicare cuts as well as earning the federal government around $1 trillion in 10 years through taxes. The Republican budget encourages Congress to cut all Obamacare taxes but then offers no clear solution for how to make up for the federal revenue lost. The only solution the budget seems to propose is issuing yet another tax reform to raise the same $1 trillion. “I find it hard to believe that, first, Congress would choose to repeal all of Obamacare, and then Congress would follow that up by passing a $1 trillion revenue-positive tax reform,” said Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group devoted to deficit reduction. “But that appears to be the theory of the case.” The budget also requests that Congress eliminate the law’s Medicare cuts , but, again, offers no clear or logical policies to make up for the loss in revenue. Furthermore, the budget also proposes that Congress establish a new health care reform that will, “increase access to quality, affordable health care by expanding choices and flexibility for individuals, families, businesses and states while promoting innovation and responsiveness.” However, if this new reform costs the government money, the budget does not specify where the money will come from. While cutting Obamacare may save the country money, I do not believe it is the right choice unless the Republican party develops a more comprehensive and effective plan for what to do once it is gone. Congress should not cut a major law that covers the health insurance of 16.4 million without a bulletproof plan. If cutting the Affordable Care Act turns out to be the best option, then Congress should do it, but only when it is entirely sure that this will benefit the economy and the lives of the American people; however, as of right now, this is not the case. The Republican party should focus less on achieving its partisan goal to do away with Obamacare and develop a real solution to address the deficit from a variety of angles.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/upshot/where-the-republican-budget-plan-meets-reality-on-health-care.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
Nancy,
I believe that this proposed budget plan would be great for the United States, especially coming out of the slow recovery we have made from the recent recession. Being able to handle the nation's budget is something that has not been done efficiently since the Clinton administration, and I believe balancing this budget would giver the American people more confidence in the ability of the government to handle these expenses.
In my opinion, cutting the Affordable Care Act would be a good idea due to all the speculation and the deliverance it got when being released. I completely agree with Sammy as well, because even though there were good intentions behind the ACA it made a good amount of people's lives worse when having to deal with insurance. And, the amount of people who it did benefit was a small margin.
Also, the Republicans are shooting high for the time in which a surplus may occur, I believe that if this budget does get passed that it will happen within the the next three decades. It takes time to allow for such drastic changes like this budget plan to effect the American lifestyle and actually become successful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/us/senate-budget-rejects-house-bid-to-skirt-military-spending-caps.html?_r=0
Once again, the Republicans have taken a headstrong and stubborn approach to appropriating funds for the federal budget, but on a larger scale in this recent debacle over domestic spending and the federal deficit. As the deficit reaches all time records and never seems to be going down anytime soon, the Republicans in Congress have assumed that an ultimatum is the only way to solve their economic woes in the form of a 5.5 trillion “cut” over 10 years, rather than thinking rationally about the long term consequences. As a result of their complete control over both houses in Congress, Republicans believe they can commit to any form of legislation that fits their ideology without thinking about the effects of the American people on an individual level, rather than as a whole.
While the House Republicans call this budget cut “streamlining” or “empowering states”, the revised budget plan is simply a scheme to deplete domestic programs of necessary funding and destroy long-term infrastructure plans set up by the former Congress. Rather than raising tax brackets and targeting the upper class who in retrospect, are taxed less than the middle class, Republicans plan to take away from social security benefits, food stamps, and welfare programs that prop up the classes that sit below the wealth and power of big businesses and rich entrepreneurs. Although they claim a 13 billion surplus will emerge from their macroeconomic approach to the economic issues they plan to solve, they fail to realize the microeconomic impact on small businesses and the lower classes who will fail to receive the basic programs they need to survive. In addition to the above programs, spending on Medicaid would fall $913 billion and the ultimatum of the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act would leave millions without health care to cover their medical expenses, leaving many Americans in a state of desperation. In my opinion, the “dynamic growth” that will emerge from this budget plan leaves out the millions of lives that will be left in ruins, meaning that the costs will definitely outweigh the benefits in this situation.
Furthermore, regardless of the veto that Obama will give this bill or the compromises the Republicans will be willing to make, be sure to expect less health care and economic insurance in your future, because they don't seem to keen on keeping the American Dream alive for very long.
Nancy,
This is a very interesting situation that provides insight on many different aspects of American society and politics. It brings up a controversy over what is more important: the defense of the country or the welfare of the country. I personally think that both are extremely important, but defense edges out welfare for a number of reasons. One reason is that, no matter what others may say, what happens outside our borders has a significant effect on what happens inside. There is no doubt that the international diplomatic situation isn't exactly stellar at the current time. I think that eventually, possibly sooner rather than later, some large conflict is going to begin that requires the United States to get involved with its military. If that is indeed the case, I think the Republicans are making the right choice in altering the budget to focus more on defense spending. However, that does not mean that we should abandon social programs altogether, and I think the proposed budget currently could use some tweaking to please more members of both parties
Nancy,
I am personally very conflicted in deciding whether or not the Republican’s plan is a good one. I think that if done correctly the Republicans could offer alot of the Affordable Care Act and other programs are cut and invested in other areas as long as the people losing the benefits are compensated in some way. The best part of the Republicans plans is that they are not raising taxes at all. The numbers are astonishing: $913 billion over ten years if Medicaid gets taken away and turned into block grants. The sad part is the Obama tried so hard during his prime presidential years to get this program passed. This program was meant to help everyone that the could not affored healthcare. The Republicans are not fixing this problem like Obama was trying to do, they are ignoring it and putting the money into other places, assuming that the problems of the 37 million citizens will get fixed by themselves. They can not be forgotten and sadly that is what I think the Republicans are doing. Obama’s quote of how they are failing to invest in education, infrastructure, researcha dn national defense is something else that cannot be forgotten. If the Republicans could find money from other programs, other than onces so important and vital to the Democratic agenda like Medicaid, I would be glad to support them but sadly this is not the case. The American citizens are too affected by these changes.
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