WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans on a key House panel Wednesday muscled through a contentious GOP budget plan to sharply cut federal health care spending and safety-net programs like food stamps as the chief means to attack trillion-dollar-plus deficits. The GOP plan is nonbinding but calls for repealing President Barack Obama's health care law while transforming Medicare into a voucher-like system in which the government subsidizes purchases of health insurance on the private market instead of directly paying doctor and hospital bills. The budget outline also would force new austerity on an upcoming round of spending bills for domestic agencies, breaking faith with spending limits carefully negotiated with Obama and Senate Democrats just last summer. Republicans praised the plan for taking on deficits that threaten to swamp the economy if left unchecked, while Democrats assaulted it for awarding big tax cuts to the wealthy while forcing seniors to pay a far larger share of their health care costs. The GOP plan, drafted by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would use sharp cuts to domestic programs to shrink U.S. deficits to $3.1 trillion over the coming decade, less than half the size of those proposed by Obama last month. Democrats unsuccessfully pressed numerous amendments to reverse the GOP Medicare plan, restore cuts to programs like food stamps and Medicaid nursing home care and raise taxes on the wealthy. Proposals like transferring the food stamp program to the states and allowing them to impose time limits on benefits or work requirements are red meat for conservatives, as is a tax proposal to lower the top individual and corporate tax rate to 25 percent, financed by rolling back a variety of tax breaks.
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