U.S. Republican budget plan unlikely to pass in current form

By Matthew Rusling (Xinhua)

08:12, March 15, 2013

WASHINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The budget plan released this week by U.S. Representative Paul Ryan of the Republican Party is unlikely to pass, as it assumes a repeal of President Barack Obama' s landmark health care reform protected by a Democrat-led Senate, experts said.

The former contender for vice president said his plan would roll back Obamacare, echoing his party's claims that the law contributes to the massive U.S. federal spending deficit that threatens financial ruin for the world's largest economy.

But defunding the president's signature legislation is a tall order considering the Democratic-controlled Senate, and most experts, pundits and Washington-watchers say a repeal is not going to happen, the experts said.

"Obama's health care law is not being repealed, so that part of the Ryan budget is going nowhere. The Senate never will approve it," said Darrell M. West, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Republicans put together a budget for their base, not for passage."

Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced their own budget plan, which would keep annual deficits between 400 billion U.S. dollars and 600 billion U.S. dollars for most of the next ten years, which they contend will allow more robust short-term job growth than the Ryan plan.

The Senate plan, however, contains 1 trillion U.S. dollars in new taxes, and Republicans have voiced stark opposition to any additional taxes on top of the 620 billion U.S. dollars tax hike on higher earners Obama won in January's fiscal cliff deal.

The two parties so far are not seeing eye-to-eye on the two plans, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Tuesday blasting Ryan's plan for pledging to "balance our books without taking a balanced approach to deficit reduction."

"This proposal is an exercise in contradictions. Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act while counting on the law's savings to balance their budget," the Democrat lawmaker said. " They claim to protect Medicare while devising a plan to end it for future generations."

In turn, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Democrats' budget plan the "most left wing" budget of the modern era.

"Instead of getting Washington spending under control, their proposed budget doubles down on the same wasteful 'stimulus' spending we already know doesn't work," the Republican said on the Senate floor Thursday.

Noting that the budget process is usually a partisan exercise, Senior Fellow at Third Way David Kendall said the real question is whether the two budgets will be combined into a compromise resolution.

"The President is in the best position to forge an agreement between the House and Senate resolutions," Kendall said. "It is his legacy that is at stake if the nation misses another opportunity to stabilize the deficit and secure social programs for future generations. But both sides will have to be willing to come to the negotiating table."

"If an agreement were reached, the likely ingredients will come from both resolutions: tax reform, reduced health care spending, and relief from the sequester," he said, adding that other proposals like repealing the Affordable Care Act are not going to be part of a final agreement.

So far, the two sides are digging in their heels, with neither side giving in even as Obama on Thursday continued the week's Capitol Hill charm offensive, where he met with lawmakers on both sides of the isle.

"So far, there's no clear evidence to indicate that the two sides will achieve the level of cooperation needed to go through all those steps, but stranger things have happened," Kendall said.

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（Editor：YaoChun、Zhang Qian）

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