Senate Republicans unveiled their proposed fiscal 2016 budget on Wednesday, promising their tax-and- spend plan delivers $4.4 trillion more in deficit reduction than the one offered by President Barack Obama last month.
The Senate plan follows by a day the proposed budget released by House Republicans, and both plans envision a balanced budget and slight surplus at the end of a 10-year window.
They get there, however, through deep cuts and major restructuring of longstanding social welfare programs.
"This balanced budget delivers to hardworking taxpayers a more effective, efficient and accountable government, which supports Americans when it must and gets out of the way when it should," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo,, said in a statement announcing his plan.
Like the House budget proposal, Enzi would spend on the military up to the allotted budget caps under a 2011 agreement, but then would create more flexibility for additional defense spending through a contingency fund that isn’t scored against those budget constraints.
He’d set aside $58 billion for additional emergency military spending in fiscal 2016 and $27 billion a year for the subsequent five years.
Enzi also sets aside $7 billion a year for the next decade in contingency funding for expected disaster relief. This sort of funding happens annually but Enzi suggested that by putting it in his 10-year window amounts to a more honest method of budgeting.
The Senate bill counts on economic growth above 4 percent fort the balance of the decade, which would be unusally strong by historical standards.
Similar to the House measure proposed by Budget Chairman Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., the Senate bill would abolish the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature accomplishment. It would replace it with unspecified patient-friendly programs. Significantly, the Senate bill leaves in place the expected revenue projected by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to be raised by Obamacare.
"We’re at the baseline," acknowledged a Senate staffer familiar with the bill, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity before Enzi and colleagues began marking up the legislation. It means that this tax revenue must be generated elsewhere in the budget, but just where has not been determined.
The Senate bill also assumes there will be an overhaul of the tax code, but offers few details. It envisions slight increases in overall government spending, with discretionary spending – that which Congress has a say on – rising just 1.3 percent over 10 years. Government workers would also pay a greater share of their retirement benefits.
The Enzi legislation would shave an unspecified $500 million in "other" mandatory spending, beyond the savings in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. These "other" programs include farm subsidies, food stamps, welfare and a number of corporate and social welfare programs.
Committee staffers expressed confidence both the House of Representatives and Senate, now under Republican control, will be able to pass budget resolutions and reach a compromise plan before April 15, the date at which committees begin appropriating funds for the coming fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.
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