Freedom Line Blog

New House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) is picking up right where his predecessor Paul Ryan (R-WI) left off.

Today, Price introduced his first federal budget proposal which borrows heavily from Ryan’s plans, “including a plan that would transform Medicare into a voucher-like ‘premium support’ program for seniors joining Medicare in 2024 or later,” reports Fox News. “They would receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance on the private market.”

Price would also keep Ryan’s idea to convert Medicaid and food stamps into federal block grants that states can spend with more freedom than they do now.

Though this budget stands little chance of passing because Republicans in Congress don’t have the votes to overcome a certain veto by President Barack Obama, retaining the core of Ryan’s reform package sends an important signal that these budget proposals are now the fundamental elements of any conservative spending reduction agenda. Every GOP presidential aspirant will have to weigh in on whether they support this approach and what, if any, changes they would make.

This is deliberative democracy at its best.

NRO‘s Robert Costa has a great interview with Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) on the GOP Policy Committee chairman’s advice to colleagues:

“It is hard to remember that we are the minority party here in Washington,” Price says. “We run one-sixth of the federal government, and the person with the ace of spades, who can trump everything, is the president. If he wants it shut down, he’ll shut it down. My gut sense tells me that’s what he wants, and so we’ll have a shutdown, since the president wants to shut it down.”

Price believes that the GOP is ready to win the fight. “I think people understand that House Republicans have been the responsible body in all of this; that we are ones who have passed a bill to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year; that we are the ones who came up with a solution to keep this thing rolling, to keep our troops funded; and that our greatest ally in the Middle East has the resources it needs,” he says. “We are doing the right thing by standing our ground; that’s what we got elected to do.”

Let’s hope the GOP budget negotiators heed Price’s words and stand their ground.

For those worrying about the lack of legislative action in our nation’s capitol, Jonathan Weisman at the Wall Street Journal writes a nice summary of the “other” legislation racing through Congress and landing on President Obama’s desk.

Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification — 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.

Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, set aside land in the West from development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army’s Future Combat System.

Rob Nabors, the White House’s deputy budget director, called the series of new laws “a very, very quiet but important victory.”

But it’s not like the Republican opposition is asleep at the wheel. According to Rep. Tom Price (R. Ga.), “The administration is pushing so many things so rapidly it’s difficult to concentrate on all of them.” Hopefully, the bills they are concentrating on – health care, energy, education – can be stopped or modified before they too become unqualified Democratic victories.