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Republicans controlling Congress Wednesday unveiled a budget plan for the upcoming year and beyond, setting up a confrontation with President Barack Obama over his signature health care law and his vow to boost spending on domestic programs like transportation and education. House-Senate negotiators on the sweeping — but nonbinding — budget plan sealed agreement Wednesday. The 10-year balanced budget plan calls upon lawmakers to repeal Obama's health care law while enacting major curbs on safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. It would cut future-year budgets for domestic agencies below already tight spending "caps" that the White House vows to dismantle. (4/29)

If it passes, the budget resolution will also unlock a procedural tool that Republicans say they will use to send the White House a repeal of Mr. Obama’s health-care law. That tool, known as “reconciliation,” allows legislation to pass Congress with a simple majority. Republicans control 54 of 100 seats in the Senate, where most bills require 60 votes to avoid procedural hurdles. (Timiraos and Peterson, 4/29)

The Republican budget ignores Obama’s threat to veto any funding bills that lock in spending cuts for domestic programs. Instead negotiators opted for deep domestic cuts, nearly $40 billion in additional defense spending from off-book funds and a new attack on the president’s signature health-care bill. (Snell, 4/29)

[T]he "reconciliation" procedural instructions are focused exclusively on repealing Obamacare, the five-year-old Affordable Care Act. The document directs the two Senate committees and three House committees with jurisdiction over the law to find savings of at least $1 billion each. (Lawder, 4/29)

Under intense pressure from his Republican colleagues, Sen. Bob Corker on Wednesday dropped objections to what he called gimmickry in a budget deal, paving the way for Congress to clear a spending blueprint for the first time in half a decade. The Tennessee Republican’s concession represents a major victory for GOP leadership, Republican moderates and defense hawks. Had Corker succeeded, appropriators say they would have had to cut several billion dollars from domestic programs when there’s precious little money to spare. (Bade, 4/29)

Conservative presidential candidates hitting the 2016 campaign trail are firing up crowds with calls to shrink the U.S. government, but a new poll shows that Republican voters who rally to that cry still want to maintain many federal programs. Ideas such as abolishing the U.S. income tax and shifting many of the federal government's responsibilities to the states draw robust support from Republican voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. But there is much weaker support for curbing government’s role in providing a social safety net and for curbing some of its regulatory functions. ... Nearly 80 percent of Republicans oppose eliminating middle-class entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Sixty-four percent of Republicans oppose getting rid of aid programs for the poor, such as food stamps and Medicaid. (Becker, 4/30)