Republican goal to balance budget could mean deep cuts to health programs

From The Washington Post:

Anxiety is rising among House Republicans about a strategy of appeasement toward fiscal hard-liners that could require them to embrace not only the sequester but also sharp new cuts to federal health and retirement programs.

Letting the sequester hit was just the first step in a pact forged in January between conservative leaders and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to keep the government open and the nation out of default. Now comes step 2: adopting a budget plan that would wipe out deficits entirely by 2023.

The strategy runs counter to warnings from prominent Republicans such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal against becoming “the party of austerity.” Just as GOP lawmakers are tacitly endorsing sequester cuts to the Pentagon, long a sacred cow, they fear the balanced-budget goal will force them to abandon a campaign pledge not to reduce Medicare benefits for those who are now 55 and older.

The strategy runs counter to warnings from prominent Republicans such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal against becoming “the party of austerity.” Just as GOP lawmakers are tacitly endorsing sequester cuts to the Pentagon, long a sacred cow, they fear the balanced-budget goal will force them to abandon a campaign pledge not to reduce Medicare benefits for those who are now 55 and older.

“There’s plenty of political peril associated with this. Whether we as a conference have the stomach to look at Medicare and Social Security spending will be the make-or-break part of the deal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior member of the House Budget Committee. “But I think setting an ambitious goal was wise. If we can’t do it, the country can’t do it.”

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) plans to present the new framework next week and put it to a vote in the House before the Easter break. In a brief interview, he said the year-end “fiscal cliff” deal made balancing the budget easier than it would have been last year, when he offered a plan that wouldn’t balance the budget until nearly 2040. Independent analysts estimate that Ryan would have to cut about $100 billion more in 2023 to balance spending and revenue.

Ryan declined to discuss policy changes under consideration, including accelerating measures that would end Medicare’s guarantee of open-ended coverage. Last year’s GOP budget delayed Medicare changes until 2023. And it made no explicit cuts to Social Security benefits, which Republican leaders have since argued should be reduced through a less-generous measure of inflation.