WASHINGTON (AP) - Republicans controlling the House are opting for the politically safe route as they follow up their tightfisted, tea party-driven budget with less controversial steps to cut spending.
Instead of big reductions in Medicaid and Medicare, top GOP lawmakers are sticking mostly with familiar proposals like cutting money for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and federal employee pensions while reaching out to Democrats to help pass annual spending bills.
At issue is follow-up legislation to the sweeping budget document that passed the House last month. Under Congress' arcane budget process, it's simply a nonbinding blueprint that sets the terms for follow-up legislation.
The broader GOP plan, by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., also calls for cutting day-to-day operating budgets for domestic agencies $19 billion below last summer's bipartisan budget and debt deal.
Republicans strongly backed the Ryan plan last month as a first step in tackling out of control deficits. It's also a campaign document that casts in stark relief the differences between Republicans and Democrats on spending and deficits with an election little more than six months away.
But steps to actually try to pass the full Ryan budget into law aren't happening; with Obama in the White House and Democrat controlling the Senate, any attempt to follow up the Ryan plan with binding legislation is doomed to fail. So GOP leaders like Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, appear to have decided there's no sense in making GOP lawmakers walk the plank and cast numerous politically dangerous votes on issues like Medicare.
Still, conservatives are enthusiastic about the cuts, though they pale in comparison to what's in store if Republicans win the Senate and take back the White House.
"It is, to a certain extent, an introduction to what we might go through next year if the elections go the way we want," said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.
What the Republicans are doing now is hardly unusual. Democrats in the Senate aren't pressing ahead at all on the budget, fearful of politically risky votes.
But the differences between the Ryan budget and the follow-up legislation are dramatic nonetheless. First up is legislation to cut $261 billion from benefit programs over the coming decade. The budgets for such programs are generally on autopilot, determined by eligibility criteria instead of by annual spending bills. The cuts pale compared to the $5 trillion in spending the GOP budgets proposes to whack from Obama's proposals over the same period.
Republicans are limiting other implementing legislation to a series of mostly familiar proposals, like cutting money from Obama's health care and financial regulations, requiring federal workers to contribute more to their pensions, limiting damages in medical malpractice cases, and blocking illegal immigrants from claiming child credits in the form of tax refunds.