Senate GOP Budget to Break with Paul Ryan’s Blueprints
Senate Republicans will not include detailed plans to overhaul entitlement programs when they unveil their first budget in nearly a decade this week, according to GOP sources. The decision would break from Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) House budgets from recent years, which Democrats used to pound Republican candidates in the 2012 and 2014 elections….The GOP budget would balance in 10 years, according to GOP lawmakers familiar with the document, but it will only propose savings to be achieved in Medicare and Medicaid, without spelling out specific reforms as Ryan and House Republicans did in recent budgets. The Senate GOP blueprint will not propose reforming Social Security…
One GOP senator said Ryan exceeded his authority as budget chairman when he sketched out a detailed vision for overhauling entitlement programs. “He spent a lot of time working on it but he had no power to write Medicare reform,” said the lawmaker, who argued the power to reform entitlement programs lies with the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means panel. Ryan became chairman of Ways and Means at the beginning of this year. “We don’t have the power to write the details of Medicare, Medicaid, certainly not Social Security,” the GOP senator said. Read More…