Conservative Republican group offers more austere U.S. budget plan

[March 24, 2015]  By David Lawder
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Republican conservatives and defense hawks dissatisfied with their party's budget plan will get to vote on a more austere alternative that eliminates deficits faster and shifts more spending to the military from domestic programs.

The Republican Study Committee on Monday unveiled its plan to cut spending by $7.1 trillion over 10 years, reaching a surplus in six years by cutting more deeply into federal healthcare and retirement programs as well as domestic agency budgets.

The House of Representatives will consider the plan later this week as an amendment to replace House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price's budget, which proposes to cut domestic spending by $5.5 trillion and reach balance in 2024, three years later than the RSC plan.

The non-binding budgets to be considered this week in both the Republican-controlled House and Senate do not become law. They serve to showcase the party's fiscal priorities and will influence spending bills later this year and during the 2016 presidential campaign.

House Democrats on Monday unveiled their own budget, which closely tracks the plan from President Barack Obama, but without $430 billion in cuts he proposed for the Medicare health program for seniors. Their plan would add $5.95 trillion to deficits over 10 years.

The conservative Republican Study Committee offered a key difference on defense spending from the main Republican plan, boosting the core Defense Department budget to $570 billion for fiscal 2016, some $47 billion above statutory spending caps.

Price's plan nominally maintains so-called "sequester" caps but would add $38 billion to an off-budget war funding account.

Some Republicans have said they cannot support a budget that fails to at least match Obama's $561 billion core Pentagon budget request. All Democrats are expected to vote against the Republican plan.

The additional RSC money for the military would come from deeper cuts to domestic discretionary spending, breaking a "firewall" designed to ensure that sequester cuts are evenly shared between defense and non-defense programs.

The RSC document identifies dozens of domestic programs to be eliminated, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Labor Relations Board.

Representative Bill Flores of Texas, who heads the group, acknowledged his plan is unlikely to supplant Price's budget, but said parts of it will "wind up in appropriations bills."

(Reporting By David Lawder; Editing by Tom Brown)

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