Congress Passes Obama’s 2010 Budget without Republican Support
The House and Senate passed President Obama’s $3.5 trillion 2010 budget proposal Thursday night without one Republican in either chamber supporting it.
The Los Angeles Times presented this analysis:
Voting along party lines, the House and Senate approved budget blueprints that would trim Obama’s spending proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October and curtail his plans to cut taxes. The blueprints, however, would permit work to begin on the central goals of Obama’s presidency: an expansion of healthcare coverage for the uninsured, more money for college loans, and a cap-and-trade system to reduce gases that contribute to global warming.
The measures now move to a conference committee where negotiators must resolve differences between the two chambers, a prelude to the more difficult choices that will be required to implement Obama’s initiatives. Although Democrats have sanctioned the president’s vision for transforming huge sectors of the economy, they remain fiercely divided over the details.
There is no agreement, for example, on how to pay for an overhaul of the healthcare system expected to add more than $1 trillion to the budget over the next decade, nor is there consensus on how to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars the government stands to collect by setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions and forcing industry to buy permits to pollute.
Both chambers did have some agreements. The House and Senate signed off on Obama’s idea to extend tax cuts for the middle class beyond 2010 and to allow tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 a year to expire.
Lawmakers also decided to trim down the president’s proposal to protect many families from the alternative minimum tax and eliminated his proposal to make permanent the $800 tax credit for working families.
The final House vote was 233-196, with 20 Democrats voting nay. The final Senate vote was 55-43, with two Democrats voting nay.