New Republican spending cuts include well-known health programs

Feb 14 2011

House Republican leaders pushed out a new round of proposed spending cuts Friday night as they sought to meet demands by conservatives in the party to trim $100 billion from the current spending levels. Health programs were among the targets.

Politico: House GOP Targets Health Care Funding
The House Republican spending bill to fund the government for the rest of the year would bar funding for the director of the White House Office of Health Reform and for enforcement of the 1099 reporting requirement that Congress is already trying to repeal. It also ratchets back funding for preventive services under the new Prevention and Public Health Fund, community health centers, and National Health Service Corps to 2008 levels — wiping out any increases provided under the health care law. The spending measure cuts $360 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under a program management account that mainly pays for Medicare operations, and $65 million from the Administration on Aging. And it includes a series of new cuts to health care programs, including $850 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $174 million in the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant. It also cancels funding for the research, demonstration and evaluation program at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The cuts were the latest to emerge from the newly rewritten spending bill, which House appropriators introduced Friday night after slashing spending more deeply to satisfy conservatives' demands. The new bill is intended to cut $100 billion from President Barack Obama's spending request (Nather, 2/11).

The Hill: Tea Party Wins: $100 Billion In Cuts In House Republicans' Spending Bill
The Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) section of the CR cuts $17.5 billion, or nearly 11 percent from last year's level, compared to a 4 percent cut in the original CR. ... The CR contains many controversial deep cuts; among them are $747 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants & Children (WIC). ... It cuts $1 billion for community health centers and $1.1 billion from Head Start. It especially whacks foreign assistance for the poor. Food for Peace looses $687 million. Global Health and Child Survival gets cut $784 million, development assistance is cut $746 million and international disaster assistance looses $415 million (Wasson, 2/11).

The Wall Street Journal: House GOP Leaders Release Plan for Deeper Cuts
The proposed cuts touch on an array of programs long cherished by Democrats, who say they're crucial to helping the disadvantaged. ... "These were hard decisions, and I know many people will not be happy with everything we've proposed in this package," said Rep. Hal Rogers (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "That's understandable and not unexpected, but I believe these reductions are necessary to show that we are serious about returning our nation to a sustainable financial path." ... The Republicans' proposed cuts did not tackle Social Security or Medicare, which make up the lion's share of federal spending, but are popular and politically difficult to cut. ... Democrats pointed specifically to cuts of $88 million for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which inspects meat and poultry, and $241 million for the Food and Drug Administration. They suggested these cuts could threaten Americans' safety (Bendavid, 2/12).

The New York Times: E.P.A. and Public Broadcasting Are on House Republicans' List for Deep Cuts
The spending bill, put forward by the Appropriations Committee for consideration on the floor next week, proposes slashing a wide portfolio of domestic programs and foreign aid. It blocks the spending of about $2 billion in unused economic stimulus money and seeks to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from enforcing the new health care law. ... "The priorities identified in this proposal for some of the largest cuts — environmental protection, health care, energy, science and law enforcement — are essential to the current and future well-being of our economy and communities across the country," said Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee (Hulse and Herszenhorn, 2/11).

Politico: Health Care Foe Calls For Government Shutdown
A leading opponent of the health care reform law is calling on congressional Republicans to allow a shutdown of the federal government if that's what it takes to cut off funding for the law. DeFundIt.org, the group best known for getting congressional candidates last fall to promise a funding cutoff, is blanketing Capitol Hill with a guide presenting strategies for withholding money needed to implement the law. The guide, obtained by POLITICO, says the political risk of a government shutdown is worth taking — because Republicans can blame it on Senate Democrats and because it's better than letting the law take effect (Nather, 2/11).

Politico: Medicare Cuts Likely In W.H. Budget
As President Barack Obama unveils his budget Monday, multiple sources say to expect cuts to Medicare beyond just curtailing waste, fraud and abuse. This is probably the most politically interesting aspect of the HHS budget. There's not much to watch on ACA implementation funds—the bill mandated the funding to implement its core provisions. ... Medicare, however, presents a unique problem. It is tough to cut, because of its vocal, politically active constituency of seniors. But it is also a ballooning entitlement quickly becoming more unsustainable as Baby Boomers age. The Bowles/Simpson deficit commission has given the administration some ideas on how to cut Medicare (Coughlin and Feder, 2/11).