US Congress to vote on budget-cutting plan

The voting will signal the start of an even fiercer fight over future trillion-dollar cuts to shrink the mounting federal debt.Both the House and the Senate were expected to approve the cuts in spending through September 30, a plan that was agreed to in the final moments before midnight last Friday when the government would have been forced to shutdown for lack of appropriations to keep agencies running.President Barack Obama and his Democrats are locked in an ideological confrontation with Republicans, especially a nearly 90-strong freshman class in the House of Representatives that is allied with the ultraconservative tea party. Their victory in November gave Republicans control of the House and established a divided government that has forced Obama to accept compromises on spending and taxation that have deeply angered the liberal wing of his Democratic Party.With that fight ending with todays expected congressional approval of the $38.5 billion in cuts over the next 5 1/2 months, Obama gave a major address on Wednesday laying out his fiscal vision to start whittling down the nations $14-plus trillion debt in the coming years. The speech was seen as an opening of the presidents bid for re-election in 2012, a campaign that is sure to be dominated by the need to bring down the countrys spiraling red ink.The debt, in relation to the size of the American economy, has reached alarming proportions. Republicans in particular are pounding the issue, which they say endangers the countrys domestic well-being and its ability to influence world affairs.The plan Obama outlined in his speech at George Washington University was significantly at odds with one unveiled last week by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, the budget committee chairman, who proposed gradually phasing out key elements of the US social safety net government programmes that provide health care for Americans age 65 and older and for poor people.Obama fired a broadside at the Ryan vision that would transform Medicare, the health care programme for the elderly, into a voucher-like system for people under the age of 55 and impose stringent cuts on Medicaid health care to the poor and disabled, including people in nursing homes. The president further said the nation must raise taxes on Americans with incomes above $200,000 couples making more than $250,000 erasing reductions implemented by Bush.He proposed an unspecified “debt fail-safe” that would go into effect if Congress did not make sure the national debt would be falling by 2014 relative to the size of the overall economy.