Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) and 43 of her Republican colleagues have sent a letter to Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) to protect Medicaid funding in conference negotiations on the fiscal 2006 budget resolution.

With House Democrats united in opposition to Medicaid cuts, Rep. Wilson’s coalition could provide the majority needed to adopt a nonbinding motion to instruct House conferees to drop a budget provision that would likely result in Medicaid cuts. That would put both the House and Senate on record against Medicaid cuts, which Republican budget writers consider essential to their effort to rein in mandatory spending.

The House version of the budget resolution (H Con Res 95) directs the Energy and Commerce Committee to find $20 billion in savings over five years, most of which would come from Medicaid. The Senate voted to strike a similar $15 billion instruction to the Senate Finance Committee before adopting its version of the budget (S Con Res 18) last month. No amendment targeting the proposed Medicaid cuts was permitted in the House.

In the Senate, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon), who sponsored the amendment stripping the instructions to the Finance Committee, is negotiating with Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) on Medicaid savings. Sen. Smith has said he wants savings from Medicaid to be limited, but that he wants to support the final version of the budget resolution.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota) has recommended that Medicaid cuts be included in the budget blueprint but delayed until the later years of the resolution’s five year time frame. Arguing, that would allow time for study by a Medicaid commission that Smith’s amendment called for and Rep. Wilson’s group has endorsed.

Medicaid is one of a number of mandatory spending programs from which Republican leaders hope to extract some savings. There are also wide gaps between the House and Senate on agriculture programs.