Published on January 24, 2013 at 3:43 AM
Los Angeles Times: House GOP Lines Up Debt Ceiling Vote; White House Will Not Oppose
Boehner and his leadership team emerged with the new strategy after a private retreat last week with lawmakers. They believe their leverage in forcing budget cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic programs will be greater on the next battles, and want to push the politically and economically risky debt ceiling debate off to pursue these next pressure points (Mascaro, 1/22).
The Associated Press/Washington Post: House Republicans Seek To Defuse Debt Crisis With Vote On 3-Month Increase In Borrowing Limit
But Republicans and Obama now appear on a collision course over how to replace the across-the-board cuts. … "The sequester is arbitrary, but the fact is that when the sequester goes into effect ... it will have a pretty dramatic effect of people's attitudes here in Washington, and they may get serious about cuts to the mandatory side of the spending equation," Boehner said, referring to benefit programs like Medicare and food stamps, whose budgets essentially run on autopilot (1/22).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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