Over the last two weeks, Congress has forged forward with plans to enact fiscally irresponsible budget and tax reconciliation bills that together will raise the deficit by as much as $35 billion over the next five years. That such a plan ignores new fiscal strains and the public's changed priorities since Hurricane Katrina seems of little consequence to lawmakers. Despite reaching agreement earlier this year on the elements of a dreadfully harmful reconciliation package, the House and Senate are currently crafting even more appalling (and now drastically different) bills. The various versions now aim to cut more than the original $34.7 billion from entitlement programs agreed to last April and threaten the ability of the two chambers to reach consensus in conference committee later this fall. Senate Increases Cuts, But Attempts to Protect Beneficiaries A number of committees in the Senate spent much of the last two week crafting individual bills that, in total, would cut a net of $39.1 billion from entitlement programs over the next five years. This is $4.4 billion more than was outlined in the original budget agreement that Congress passed last April. Last Thursday, the Senate Budget Committee compiled those bills into the omnibus spending reconciliation bill and sent it to the floor of the Senate on a 12-to-10 party-line vote. The $39.1 billion outlined in the bill includes cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, agricultural subsides, student loans, pension supports, and other entitlement spending. It appeared for a time that the Senate Finance Committee would not be able to meet its requirement to cut $10 billion from programs under its jurisdiction, which include Medicaid and Medicare. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the committee, spent weeks negotiating with Republican members of the panel from both ends of the political spectrum to forge consensus on a package. In the end, he was able to win the approval of Sens. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Trent Lott (R-MS), who generally wanted more cuts to Medicaid and none to Medicare, and Sens. Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who would only agree to a package with cuts from both Medicare and Medicaid. Despite the cuts, the compromise worked out by Grassley in committee is not expected to impact program beneficiaries from either Medicaid or Medicare, instead it focuses on eliminating the Medicare stabilization fund for private health care plans, linking Medicare payments to quality of care, and closing loopholes for seniors who transfer assets in order to qualify for Medicaid nursing home care. Many other committee chairs in the Senate seemed to go out of their way to spare low-income Americans from a decrease in vital human needs supports. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) had originally planned to include significant cuts to the Food Stamp program, but eventually reported a bill with no cuts after a number of Agriculture Committee members requested they be removed. The Senate bill also does not include cuts to foster care, supplemental security income, child support enforcement, or child care funding -- all services that primarily benefit children and low-income families. The Senate began the required 20 hours of debate Monday afternoon at 4:00 pm and the debate will continue through Wednesday and possibly Thursday of this week until time for debate expires. Senators will then begin a succession of votes on amendments to the bill and then eventually vote on final passage. It is unlikely the unexpected secret session that took place in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon will push a final vote on the budget reconciliation bill beyond the end of this week. House Version Contains More Ruthless Cuts The House is approximately a week behind the Senate's reconciliation schedule since the House has been maneuvering to increase cuts to entitlement programs to $53.9 billion. Multiple House committees compiled individual bills detailing required cuts last week, and the House Budget committee is scheduled to compile those bills this Thursday, Nov. 3. The bill will likely be considered on the House floor the following week. The House version is drastically different from the Senate and hits low- and middle- income Americans particularly hard. First, the House version includes no cuts to Medicare, instead slashing $9.5 billion from the Medicaid program and requiring beneficiaries to pay more for prescription drugs, adding new co-payments for children and other new costs, while also limiting beneficiaries' access to medical care. The stark contrast between this and the Senate’s approach to program cuts in Medicaid and Medicare could be a central point of contention between the two chambers during a conference. Also unlike the Senate's version, the House bill will cut $844 million from the Food Stamp program that will, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, exclude between 225,000 and 300,000 working families from this essential nutrition support. It would seem the proposal could not come at a worse time for the working poor, with a report from the Agriculture department released the same day the cuts were approved showing the number of "food insecure Americans" has increased for the fifth consecutive year. The USDA reported the total number of people living in "food insecure households" -- those suffering from hunger without resources to purchase an adequate diet -- increased to 38.2 million last year, an almost two million person increase from 2003. The food stamp program cuts proposed by the House would undoubtedly increase those ranks, leaving hundreds of thousands more Americans struggling to put food on their tables without the support. Both the House and Senate include cuts to student loan programs, but the House includes almost twice as much ($8.5 billion vs. $15 billion). The State Public Interest Research Group's Education Project has calculated these cuts in the House bill will cost a typical student $5,800 per year on average in additional education costs - causing many financially strapped students to drop out of school. The list of cuts continues, with the House bill including cuts to foster care ($600 million), supplemental security income for the disabled ($730 million), and a whopping 40 percent cut to child support enforcement ($5 billion). In general, the Senate has been less draconian in proposing cuts that affect low-income Americans, yet any compromise reached with the House during conference will almost assuredly add or increase cuts to low-income programs from the Senate level. All For The Tax Cuts Most troubling of all is that the savings from these miserly proposals would merely pay for new tax cuts for wealthy Americans. GOP leaders, leaving out this inconvenient fact, claim the reconciliation bills are needed to reign in spending to get the deficit under control. Yet, the same voices calling for tightening our belts, plan to pass $70 billion in additional tax cuts through the fast-tracked reconciliation process in the next two weeks, after the spending bill is completed.. Once the spending bill is passed, the reconciliation process -- designed to make easier enacting difficult legislation to cut entitlements and increase taxes in order to reduce deficits -- will actually increase deficits by at least $35 billion. Neither the House nor the Senate is considering canceling plans to pass these new tax cuts or delaying the enactment of planned cuts benefiting the richest of the rich. A disproportionate share of the burden is being hoisted on the shoulders of those least able to bear it - the young, the old, the sick, disabled, and hungry, and many other vulnerable citizens. All the while, the well-off continue to receive very generous benefits through continued tax cuts. House GOP leaders announced today that a final agreement between the House and Senate on a tax cut reconciliation bill could slip into 2006 due to difficulty not only building consensus among House Republicans, but also finding support within the Senate GOP, as to the necessity of enacting another round of new tax cuts. Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-MO), however, remained optimistic about passage in the House of the additional tax cuts this year. The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (TPC) reports that households with incomes of over $1 million are receiving tax cuts this year from the 2001 and 2003 tax-cut legislation that total on average $103,000 a year. The total cost for these tax cuts for this year alone is $225 billion. In addition, neither chamber has even broached the subject of stopping two extremely expensive tax cuts that will exclusively benefit very high-income households that have yet to take effect but are scheduled to do so on Jan. 1. The TPC estimated that 97 percent of the benefits from these tax cuts (commonly referred to as the PEP and Pease provisions) will go to the 4 percent of households with incomes greater than $200,000. When these two tax cuts are fully in effect, more than half (54 percent) of their benefits will go to households with income of over $1 million a year -- each millionaire household will receive $19,200 each year -- an amount nearly equal to that earned by two working parents each year making minimum wage: $21,424. Speak out now and tell your representatives to scrap the reconciliation bills this year and enact sound fiscal policies that promote the common good for all Americans.