May 26, 2011 01:26 AM UTC

Senate Rejects Ryan Budget, Medicare Overhaul

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• by: Colorado Pols

From Politico:

With five Republicans joining Democrats in opposition, the Senate easily rejected a House-passed budget plan Wednesday calling for deep cuts in domestic appropriations and major restructuring of Medicare, the government-backed healthcare program for the elderly.

The 57-40 roll call proved more for show than substance but still stung for GOP leaders, coming less than 24 hours after the same Medicare issue figured prominently in the upset of a Republican candidate in a special House election for upstate New York.

In a tell-tale sign of trouble ahead, there were significantly more defections among GOP moderates than in a similar partisan show vote in March testing support then for an earlier House Republican budget initiative focused on discretionary spending cuts. [Pols emphasis]

Colorado Republican Rep. Cory Gardner was defiant regarding the Ryan budget in an earlier Politico story today, but this afternoon’s Senate vote is telling in how moderates rejected the Ryan budget across-the-board. There’s Gardner’s strategic approach to Medicare and the “Ryan budget,” and then there’s the strategy being employed by Senate moderates — we can tell you which direction we’d be more comfortable with as an incumbent member of Congress (hint: it ain’t Gardner’s position).