Medicare, Medicaid Must Be Part of U.S. Budget Debate, Senator Coburn Says
The effort to shrink the U.S. budget deficit must include changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs, said Senator Tom Coburn, one of a group of six senators trying to strike a compromise on federal spending cuts.
“You can’t have Medicare out of the equation,” Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and one of the so-called Gang of Six senators seeking a deal, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program broadcast yesterday. “You can’t have Medicaid out of the equation. To lead on this issue and create a false predicate that says we can solve our problems without addressing our entitlements hurts the country.”
As part of the debate on government spending, which includes completing a 2012 budget, President Barack Obama has offered the outlines of a plan to reduce the debt by $4 trillion over 12 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has proposed cutting spending by $6 trillion over a decade in part by privatizing Medicare and capping Medicaid spending. Republicans reject Obama’s push for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to help reduce debt.
Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat and chairman of the budget committee, said on “Meet the Press” that the U.S. is “headed for a fiscal cliff” if it doesn’t address the deficit. Conrad and Coburn, who is also on the budget committee, are both in the bipartisan Gang of Six.
Debt Limit
Conrad said he wouldn’t support raising the government’s $14.3 trillion debt limit for more than a year “without a plan or a proposal or process in place to deal with the debt.” He said he would vote for a short-term extension.
Congress is facing a vote as early as next month on raising the debt ceiling. The Treasury Department projects that it will hit the cap on May 16, though it could use emergency measures to avoid default until about July 8.
Obama and members of his economic team have said that failure to approve an increase could have dire consequences for the U.S. economy and financial markets.
Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said yesterday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program that the “best play here” is to attach raising the limit to whatever emerges from the Gang of Six. “That would be huge cuts in the future spending of the United States that may be a good deal,” he said.
Unless he sees “comprehensive, dramatic, effective and broad-based cuts to federal spending, including the reform of entitlement spending,” Kirk said he would vote no. “We should not send a blank check to the administration.”
‘Catastrophic’ for Economy
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who also appeared on the program, said “unequivocally yes” that the limit should be raised. Failure to do so “would be catastrophic for our economy.”
Representative Joe Walsh, a freshman Illinois Republican, told CBS that unless Washington agrees to “cut up this credit card,” he can’t support extending the ceiling.
“Three or four times over the course of the last 20 years, Congress has voted not to raise the debt ceiling, and it’s taken a few months and then they’ve come together and they’ve raised it,” Walsh said. “When the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, Armageddon didn’t hit. The government paid its bills.”
The Gang of Six -- three Republicans and three Democrats -- also includes Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois as well as Republican senators Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Mike Crapo of Idaho.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ian Katz in Washington at ikatz2@bloomberg.net; Jesse Hamilton in Washington at jhamilton33@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net