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The budget would also transform Medicaid by combining it with the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which expires later this year, and providing states with block grants.
The RSC budget would reform the nation’s welfare system by restoring work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. In 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services decided it would consider state waivers for welfare work requirements. The budget would also reform the government’s food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, by calling on the House Agriculture Committee to offer legislation that would convert it to a block grant.
For Social Security, the RSC blueprint would eventually raise the full retirement age to 70 and would impose chained consumer price index (CPI) for Social Security benefit calculations. The proposal, which Obama had offered in previous budgets and then dropped, would result in lower benefits.
To address infrastructure issues, the budget calls for shifting the authority to state and local governments, and phase out the federal government’s authority over five years. The plan also says Congress should lower the federal gas tax, which currently funds the Highway Trust Fund.
To balance the budget through cuts, the RSC proposes eliminating or repealing a slew of government programs such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Election Assistance Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Labor Relations Board and a program that taxes Christmas trees.
The plan would also reduce funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS and foreign governments.
GOP leaders normally allow votes on RSC budgets, but the GOP-led House has rejected their blueprints over the last several years. Last year, for example, it failed in a 133-291 vote.
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