House OKs plan to trim deficit
House OKs plan to trim deficit
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided House approved a $3.6 trillion Republican budget on Thursday recasting Medicare and imposing sweeping cuts in domestic programs, capping a battle that gave both political parties a campaign-season stage to spotlight their warring deficit-cutting priorities.
But the partisan divisions over the measure, which is dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate, also underscores how tough it will be for lawmakers to achieve the cooperation needed to contend with a tsunami of tax and spending decisions that will engulf Congress after this fall’s elections.
“This is very easy,” Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates debt reduction, said of House passage of a budget that will go no further in Congress. “When you get to the budget bomb at the end of the year, it’s for real. You’re going to … have to pass something.”
The fiscal plan the House passed Thursday by a near party-line 228-191 vote would reshape and squeeze savings out of Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health insurance programs for the elderly and poor.
It would force deep cuts in a wide range of spending, including rail projects, research and Pell Grants for low-income college students. It would block President Barack Obama’s plans to raise taxes on couples earning above $250,000 a year.
Jobless claims lowest in 4 years
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in four years, adding to evidence that the job market is strengthening.
Applications for weekly unemployment benefits fell by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 359,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the fewest applicants since April 2008. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, declined to 365,000 — the fewest for that measure since May 2008.
When unemployment benefit applications drop consistently below 375,000, it usually signals that hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate. The decline has coincided with the best three months of hiring in two years.
The department made annual revisions to the past five years of data, which increased the number of applications in recent months and showed a slower decline. Still, even after the revisions, applications have fallen roughly 12 percent over the past six months. Most economists still expect another strong month of hiring in March.
Not guilty plea in teacher’s death
St. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) — A snowplow driver and his wife went to great lengths to dispose of the body of a popular teacher they had just beaten and strangled, putting her nude body on a tarp, pouring bleach on it, weighing the corpse down with concrete blocks and tossing it into the Connecticut River, court documents allege.
Allen Prue, 30, and his wife, 33-year-old Patricia Prue, were riding around when he got the idea “to get a girl,” a police affidavit said. They are accused of luring single mother Melissa Jenkins from her home by pretending their vehicle had broken down. Her vehicle was found idling Sunday with her unharmed 2-year-old son inside.
The couple pleaded not guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in the death of Jenkins, a 33-year-old science teacher at the prestigious St. Johnsbury Academy, and unauthorized burial or removal of a dead body. More charges are possible, police said. People in the close-knit communities of northeastern Vermont had been speculating about the crime and who was responsible.
Woman testifies on priest abuse
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A witness in a landmark priest abuse trial told a jury on Thursday she felt “helpless and trapped” as a 13-year-old because a priest was fondling her when she worked weekends at the rectory. The woman said she didn’t tell anyone for years and later learned the priest had fondled two younger sisters.
Her testimony came on the fourth day of the child endangerment trial of Monsignor William Lynn, the longtime secretary for clergy in Philadelphia. Lynn is the first Roman Catholic church official in the U.S. charged with child endangerment after being accused of leaving predators in jobs around children.
Defense lawyers say Lynn took orders from two archbishops. No other church administrators are charged. The priest accused of having fondled the woman when she was a girl at a suburban Montgomery County parish around 1970 was removed from ministry after the church sex abuse scandal broke in 2004. By then, he had admitted to an archdiocesan review board his “longstanding habit” of fondling girls’ breasts, according to a 2005 grand jury report.