The House Republicans’ $1.2 trillion bill for financing federal programs the rest of the year is littered with spending cuts and prohibitions that make a showdown with President Obama and Senate Democrats inevitable this year. Among the biggest flash points are provisions that would:
• Cut about $60 billion in spending from last year’s levels in a wide swath of domestic programs, including education, environmental protection and community services.
• Block money to implement Obama’s health care overhaul law enacted last year.
• Bar federal funds for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and family planning services with its hundreds of clinics across the U.S. The organization says 90 percent of the $363 million a year it receives in government aid comes from Washington or the federal-state Medicaid program.
• Eliminate federal family planning and teen pregnancy prevention grants.
• Block federal aid to overseas groups that provide abortions or counsel women about them.
• Cut Social Security Administration funding, which the agency has warned might force it to furlough workers. Democrats say furloughs would slow the flow of benefits to program recipients; Republicans say offices would not close and call such threats political fearmongering.
• Prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing regulations curbing emissions of gases that cause global warming.
• Stop the Federal Communications Commission from preventing broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic on their networks.
• Reduce Pell Grants for lower-income college students by $5.6 billion, which the White House says would reduce the maximum $5,550 grant by $845.
• Cut $747 million in food aid for poor pregnant women and women with children up to the age of 5.
• Eliminate federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
• Halt financing for the AmeriCorps national service program, which pays people to do public service jobs and encourages volunteerism.
• Limit this year’s budget for the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to $80 million. It would also cut the budgets of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, charged with enforcing other parts of the financial overhaul law.
• Prevent the administration from enforcing a proposed rule making it harder for students at for-profit colleges to get federal loans and grants. Critics say the schools make huge profits while their students accumulate unusually large debts.
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