Senate GOP Won't Push Medicare Reform

The Hill reports:

A deep rift is opening wider and wider in the Republican Party over controversial proposals to cut Medicare.

Senate Republicans have decided to avoid jeopardizing their chances of capturing the upper chamber in next year’s elections and will not echo the House GOP’s call for a major overhaul of the popular health entitlement for seniors.

The Senate Republican decision to split from their colleagues in the lower chamber comes after a month during which Democrats, led by President Obama, have excoriated House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) spending blueprint.

Ryan’s Medicare plan, supported by all but four House Republicans, has been panned by Democrats as a voucher program that “would end Medicare as we know it.”

Six months after their historic triumphs in the 2010 elections, Republicans are now treading more carefully on cutting Medicare.

Some House Republicans got an earful during the April recess over the Ryan plan, and the negative feedback now has GOP leaders in a bind.

While sticking by the policies in the Ryan proposal, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants have indicated they won’t seek to pass the specific Medicare provisions through the House because they have little chance of being enacted by Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Yet House Republicans have moved a slew of bills through the lower chamber that attracted veto threats, most notably a repeal of Obama’s healthcare reform law.

The Medicare split is the first indication of major differences on the budget between Republicans in the House and Senate during the 112th Congress.