Reps.block Bush plan to trim 13 billion



Can you believe this crap that Bush is trying to do?
What is wrong with this man.
Time for him to leave now,well not sure if you want
Rambo Cheney.

The House voted yesterday to block the Bush administration from cutting federal spending on Medicaid health care for the poor by $13 billion over the next five years. President Bush has threatened a veto, but supporters have more than enough votes in the House to override him, and maybe in the Senate, too.

Two thirds of the Republicans joined every voting Democrat in the 349-62 vote to impose a one-year moratorium, through next March, on seven rules changes that the administration argues are needed to rectify waste and abuse in the state-federal partnership to provide health care to the poor.

Supporters of the bill said the rules would merely shift financial burdens to the states at a time of economic distress while reducing access to health care for the country's neediest people.

The governors of all 50 states, state Medicaid directors and others oppose the rules, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, told the House. "They know the devastating effects these rules would have on local communities, upon hospitals and upon vulnerable beneficiaries."

The House vote margin was well above the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto. Congress has overridden a Bush veto only once, last November on a water projects bill.

But the legislation must first move through the Senate Finance Committee and get a vote on the Senate floor. Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, applauded the House vote, saying he intended to work with his Senate colleagues "on strategies to stop harmful Medicaid regulations as well."

But his Republican counterpart, Charles Grassley of Iowa, has voiced opposition to the House approach of freezing the seven rules.

"It is an absolute farce for anyone to argue that all of those dollars are being appropriately spent and that Congress ought to just walk away from these issues," he said in a recent speech.

The Bush administration instituted the rules with the aim of saving the Treasury about $13 billion over five years and $33 billion over 10 years in programs that provides health coverage and nursing home care to the poor.

The White House, in a statement Tuesday warning of a veto threat, said the bill would "thwart these efforts of the federal government to regain fiscal accountability and integrity in Medicaid."

The proposed changes have met opposition from states, health care providers and advocates for poor who say they will shift costs from the federal government to the states and create new hardships for the needy.