Senators ready for budget fights over Social Security

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/politics/15budget.html

Senators ready for budget fights over Social Security
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans and Democrats are trying to use President Bush's plan to revamp Social Security as a political cannonball against each other in their skirmish over a $2.56 trillion budget.
As senators entered the second day of their weeklong debate over the GOP-written fiscal outline, fights over Medicaid, tax cuts, the environment and other hot-button issues were also on the horizon.

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Last year, four of them stood with Democrats as the Senate voted to require that new tax cuts be paid for with spending reductions or tax increases unless 60 of the 100 senators voted otherwise. The House refused to accept that constraint and no final budget was approved.

Other amendments likely this week include:

• A proposal by Sens. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to remove budget language requiring $14 billion in five-year Medicaid savings. Smith says he believes he will prevail, which would be a rejection for a proposal Bush made as well.

• A reprise of last year's amendment requiring that tax cuts be paid for.

• Removing budget language shielding the tax cuts from Senate filibusters, delays that take 60 votes to end.

• Killing language that would open the door to oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.