WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans and Democrats on a key House panel squared off Wednesday over a controversial GOP budget plan to sharply cut federal health care spending and safety-net programs like food stamps as the chief means to wrestle trillion-dollar-plus deficits under control.
The GOP plan is nonbinding but calls for repealing President Barack Obama's health care plan while transforming Medicare into a voucher-like system in which the government subsidizes purchases of health insurance on the private market instead of directly paying doctor and hospital bills.
The Medicare proposal won't be the subject of follow-up legislation under the arcane budget process on Capitol Hill. Nor do Republicans plan to pass a detailed proposal to reform the nation's complicated, loophole-ridden tax code this year.
But other elements of the measure are likely to advance this spring — at least in the GOP-dominated House — as a 10-year, $261 billion package of cuts to replace deep, across-the-board spending cuts slated to hit the Pentagon and domestic agencies in January. Those cuts were required under last year's budget pact because of the failure of the deficit "supercommittee" last fall.
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