Conservative House GOPers Unveil Alternative Budget Proposal

From today's NY Times:

WASHINGTON, March 6 — With Congress heading into a politically perilous budget season, influential House conservatives plan this week to propose an austere alternative spending plan that would pare more than $650 billion over five years, balance the budget and drastically shrink three cabinet agencies. [...]

But House conservative leaders would go far beyond the president's own budget proposal, illustrating the difficulty the White House and the Republican leadership have had in persuading the caucus to speak with one voice on the matter.

Senior aides say the conservatives' plan would wring about $350 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs and save $300 billion partly through a major reorganization of the Education, Commerce and Energy Departments. [...]

The new budget proposal is certain to be assailed by Democrats who accuse Republicans of forging ahead with tax cuts that benefit the affluent and add to the deficit while reducing support for those most in need. [...]

Under the proposal, expected to be introduced by Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, and Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, military spending would continue to rise, administration tax cuts would be protected and Social Security would be spared. But many other programs and foreign aid would be greatly scaled back.

The authors of the proposal describe it as a sequel to the Contract With America, which helped catapult Republicans to power in 1994. An outline of the plan says the proposals require "tough choices, but members have expressed a serious desire to do the hard things to save America."

Nothing new here. Conservatives plan to "save America" on the backs of the most vulnerable among us. Cutting Medicare, Medicaid, protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, and cutting foreign aid...Yeah, I think they've hit all the major targets. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, with Boehner as the new leader. At this point, this seems to be more of an attempt by Republicans to show how fiscally conservative they really are. This will get some play in the news; I wouldn't be surprised to see further cuts in some of the social programs mentioned above. However, the cuts will be much less harsh than the Pence Plan.