Thread: Brawl over Obama budget brews in Congress

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama is preparing for one of the toughest fights of his young presidency as Congress begins work on a budget that may trim his spending plans but back his healthcare, energy and education proposals.

Obama will meet fellow Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday to try to shore up support for a budget blueprint that likely would increase the deficit more than initially estimated by the White House -- it's now expected to be $1.4 trillion for next year.

The House Budget Committee will begin a marathon session on Wednesday to write its version of the budget plan, followed a day later by the Senate Budget Committee's crafting of its budget plan for fiscal 2010 and the four subsequent years.

Republicans say Obama's budget plan expands government and raises taxes on the rich and some small businesses at a time when the country is mired in a deep recession. Obama, for his part, is trying to keep fiscally-conservative Democrats on board.

There was some evidence he and Democratic leaders were making inroads in winning support from that faction of the party. "I think it's going in the right direction in terms of a smaller percentage increase in overall spending," said Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska after a briefing on the Senate Democratic budget plan.

Democrats, who control Congress, are looking for ways to shave some of the spending requests in a bid to persuade enough fiscally-moderate members of their party to support a $3.55 trillion budget next year.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said he would not grant Obama's request for $250 billion that could be used, if needed, for another bailout of the U.S. financial industry. Cutting that request was a major demand of moderate Democrats.

"I'm hopeful we can have a majority of the House and Senate support" a budget plan, said a cautious-sounding House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview with Reuters, said most Republicans would not back the plan because it included tax increases and spending hikes that would fuel the government's existing huge debt.

"There is little or no Republican support for this budget," McConnell said.

Democrats, said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a senior member of the Senate Budget Committee, want to "put the middle class first and bring the country out of the recession."

To do that, Murray told reporters, Congress must invest more in education, healthcare and alternative energy to create jobs, while shoring up domestic programs that she said were largely ignored in the eight years of the Bush administration.

"Now is not the time to sit back and criticize," Murray said in a open warning to Republicans.

But criticize is exactly what Republicans promise to do over the next two weeks as the House of Representatives and Senate debate and try to pass a non-binding budget resolution that will set national priorities for the next five years.

The Obama budget "changes the course of our nation in a fundamental way," said Senator Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. Continued...

Gregg said he and his fellow Republicans will offer a series of amendments that, taken together, would result in much lower annual budget deficits and a smaller increase in a skyrocketing federal debt that is expensive to finance.

Republicans would like bigger increases in military spending, a freeze on non-defense domestic programs and tax cuts, including on the estate tax. That is a formula they used for budgets throughout former President George W. Bush's eight years in office.

Like some Democrats, Gregg also noted the need to control spending on the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid entitlement programs. But there's scant evidence the Obama administration wants to tackle this problem immediately.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

http://www.reuters.com/article/domestic ... nnel=10112

The Dems don't need Republicans to shove all this crap down our throats, they just want to use them when the fallout hits. Make no mistake about it, there will be a huge fallout and it will rest solely on the ruling party. Unless the Dems wake up and start acting responsibly, we are NOT the world's cash draw!