Increased Military Spending Wins Out After Dueling Budget Votes in House

WASHINGTON — House Republicans beat back protests from fiscal hawks and narrowly passed a budget that increases war spending but slashes domestic programs and begins to privatize Medicare with a goal of balancing the federal books in nine years.

In an unusual move, House leaders put two Republican budgets to a vote, one that included $94 billion in off-budget war spending, $20 billion of which was supposed to be offset by cuts elsewhere, the other with $96 billion in war spending and no corresponding cuts.

With the competition over, the winning budget was ratified with one last vote, 228-199. Seventeen Republicans opposed it. No Democrats supported it.

That triumph for more military spending was an anomaly in the budget blueprint, which would cut spending $5.5 trillion over the next decade. It also includes parliamentary language, called reconciliation, that orders House committees to draft legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. Under budget rules, that reconciliation repeal bill cannot be filibustered in the Senate and would need only a majority vote to pass.

The budget would turn Medicaid into block grants to the states, cutting health care spending for the poor by $900 billion. The food stamp program would also be turned into block grants and cut by hundreds of billions of dollars. Special education, Pell Grants, job training and housing assistance would all be cut. Medicare would transition to a system where future seniors would be encouraged to use government-funded vouchers to purchase insurance in the private market.

To be sure, the congressional budget does not have the force of law. It sets overall spending levels for the coming fiscal year, and if the House and Senate can reconcile competing blueprints, a final budget can ease passage of future legislation — such as a repeal of the health care law that Republicans have promised, even though President Obama would veto it.

But its specific policy prescriptions are aspirational, not binding. “It’s a messaging document,” said Representative Diane Black of Tennessee, a senior Republican on the Budget Committee.

Republicans framed the debate around the imperative to shrink the government’s reach, balance the budget and begin to pay down a soaring federal debt — without raising taxes.

“We aim to respect the American people and talk to them about the seriousness of the challenges that we face, but provide positive alternatives, real solutions with real results,” said Representative Tom Price of Georgia, chairman of the House Budget Committee. “That is what they are longing for, real leadership in this town.”

Democrats focused on the cost of those decisions. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat, accused Republicans of “mercilessly gutting priority investments in education, job training, innovation, research and other priorities of this nation.”

“This budget is a severe disinvestment in America’s future,” he said.

Just passing the budget was important for House Republican leaders. They had to navigate a deep divide between deficit and defense hawks, then maneuver around a deadlocked House Budget Committee and cycle through multiple approaches to floor action.

The Senate will go through its own version Thursday and deep into Friday morning with what has become known as a “vote-orama,” a free-for-all of unlimited amendments — some budget oriented, many politically loaded and none binding.

If at dawn the Senate then passes its budget, House and Senate Republican negotiators will set out to reconcile similar but competing versions, hoping to present a unified Republican plan for the first time in a decade.

The House debate showcased the gulf that separates the two parties in the chamber. Republicans barely discussed the severity of the spending cuts and policy changes they envisioned. Instead, they split over how much spending they would pile into a war account that is supposed to be reserved for emergencies overseas.

President Obama’s budget proposal simply ignored strict caps on military spending set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, adding $38 billion to the $523 billion limit. Republicans have been unwilling to breach those limits; instead, they piled $96 billion into the off-budget war account, nearly $40 billion more than the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested. Total military spending would be just higher than Mr. Obama requested, though the Defense Department will be challenged with far more than it wanted in war funding and far less for basic operations.

“At the end of the day, the fight in the House — this is all about spending as much money on defense as Obama,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That’s what the $2 billion is about — getting above Obama by a billion. It’s sort of a silly exercise.”

To fiscal hawks, that was a sleight of hand too much.

“I am curious how the self-proclaimed defense hawks claim to defend our country when our credit is shot and out debt service is approaching $1 trillion a year,” said Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, who has led the opposition to the added military spending.

But his view did not prevail.

“We cannot let fiscal sanity and national security be juxtaposed as opponents,” said Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona. “It’s like trying to discern which wing on an airplane is more important. You can’t have one without the other.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter is to speak on Thursday at the State Department. Aides said he would criticize the House budget as failing to meet the needs of the military.

Democrats focused on the rest of the budget, and that portends a very messy fall. President Obama has already vowed to veto any spending bill that abides by the strict limits both the House and Senate budgets continue.

There are no moves afoot to resume budget negotiations that would resolve an impasse that both sides foresee in October when the government not only runs out of money but also reaches its borrowing limit.

“The Republicans control both sides. They can’t say, ‘Well, we had this great plan, but Harry Reid wouldn’t let it go forward,’ ” Mr. Hoyer said, referring to the Nevada Democrat and former Senate majority leader. “They’re going to have to go to conference, going to have to reach agreement, and I predict we’re going to see that deep divide we’ve seen so often reflected in a few months all over again.”