House Republicans to Tackle Ambitious Budget

By JONATHAN WEISMAN
NYT

WASHINGTON — House Republicans return from spring recess next week to face the difficult — some say impossible — task of filling the gaping holes in the House-passed budget, including figuring out how to slash income tax rates without costing the government any money and finding nearly $3 trillion in savings from entitlement programs over the next decade.

The budget, which passed the House last month and has since become a central focus of the presidential campaign, has faced blistering criticism for steep cuts to federal programs, including a blast from President Obama, who called it “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”

But the deep reductions that Mr. Obama spelled out for higher education, medical research, crime fighting and Head Start are more supposition than reality until the details are filled out. And the charge that such cuts would merely pay for still more tax cuts for the rich is expressly denied by Republican leaders who foresee no change in revenue under the budget.

Now the real work begins. Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the House Ways and Means chairman, will hold meetings with Republican the rank and file next week to map out an overhaul of the tax code that strips it down to just two personal income tax rates — 25 percent and 10 percent — and a 25 percent corporate income tax rate, and to pay for it by curtailing or ending tax deductions and credits.

(More here.)