House-approved budget sets up Senate showdown

WASHINGTON – Republicans muscled a $2.41 trillion budget through the House on Thursday that sets up a clash over a Senate-passed plan to make it harder for Congress to approve President Bush’s tax cuts.

The House measure largely embraces Bush’s budget proposal, but recasts it in acknowledgment of record federal deficits that Republicans worry may haunt them in November’s elections. The GOP plan pinches Bush’s tax reductions and spending proposals and accelerates his goal of halving deficits in five years.

But taking a stand for a Republican priority, the House budget ignores efforts by Democrats and moderate GOP lawmakers to make it harder for Congress to enact future tax cuts without paying for them. The Senate included such a plan in the budget it approved two weeks ago, over the opposition of the White House and its own Republican leadership.

After overcoming disaffection by some GOP deficit hawks and veterans advocates, majority Republicans pushed their fiscal outline for 2005 through the House by a mostly party-line vote of 215-212.

Bush congratulated the House for approving a “responsible” budget he said would buttress defense, anti-terrorism and the economy.

Republicans said the public wants government to spend federal dollars more wisely without turning to tax increases.

“We’re going nowhere but up,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, the plan’s main author, who cited the rapid economic growth of recent months. “Quit blaming tax cuts for all the problems in the world,” said Nussle, R-Iowa.

Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, voted against the budget. “Continuing deficits threaten the future of Social Security and Medicare – and that is unacceptable,” Michaud said.