House Republicans today, in addition to voting on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) so-called “Plan B” — which extends the Bush tax cuts on income up to $1 million — will also vote on a bill to replace the spending cuts scheduled for the end of the year.
As The Hill reported, the bill closely mirrors a measure passed by House Republicans in May known as the “The Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012.” (Here is the underlying legislation, which will include these minor tweaks.) That bill voids both the military spending cuts and domestic spending cuts set to take place in 2013 and replaces them with a host of cuts to domestic spending, including:
– Cuts to food stamps that could knock millions of low-income Americans out of the program;
– Cuts to Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to seniors or other individuals who are unable to prepare their own food;
– Cuts funding to health exchanges that will be created under Obamacare and funding for Medicaid included in the same law;
– Cuts to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that will yield no cost savings, but will make bailouts of big banks more likely;
– Denying the Child Tax Credit to the parents of American children, if the parents are undocumented immigrants.
The White House threatened to veto this set of spending cuts back in May, calling them “a particular burden on the middle-class and the most vulnerable among us.”
The inclusion of these cuts is ostensibly to placate House Republicans upset at Boehner for advancing “Plan B,” which does nothing on the spending side of the federal government’s ledger. Plan B already includes provisions that will cut taxes for some of the wealthiest Americans while raising them for low- and middle-income families.
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Thursday, December 20th 2012 at 7:29PM
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