Members of the House of Representatives voted Friday to protect their own office expense accounts from budget cuts.

The bipartisan 307-102 vote came on a $3.3 billion measure funding congressional operations.

Republicans controlling the House have been trying to cut domestic agency budgets by about 5 percent. But when it came to their own staff, travel and office expenses, GOP leaders opted to freeze their $574 million budget after two years of cuts.

The funding bill includes a 1 percent cut that comes chiefly from cutting back on repairs to the iconic Capitol dome, which dates to the Civil War.

After passing the measure, lawmakers immediately left Washington for a weeklong vacation.

In two earlier rounds of spending bills, Republicans imposed a 10.5 percent budget cut on House operations. Their office budgets–officially called the “members’ representational allowance” –have been cut by a total of 13 percent from a record $660 million approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress for 2010.

“Listen, the House has taken cuts two fiscal years in a row, and the Appropriations Committee went through a very detailed process of listening to members, listening to House officers in terms of what the budget should be,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said recently. “And I think a budget freeze is the appropriate course of action.”

Several GOP tea party freshmen had sought to cut office budgets by 11 percent, but House leaders shut down the effort. Instead, lawmakers voted to cut spending on the U.S. Botanic Garden on the Capitol grounds and on the Congressional Research Service, which does reports and analysis for lawmakers.

In March, the House passed a budget plan to force non-defense cuts of $27 billion below levels agreed to in a budget and debt pact forged by President Barack Obama and Speaker. Since then, spending bills have generally shielded some Cabinet departments _ like Justice, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security _ from the cuts, while the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Interior will bear a much larger share.

In addition to cuts to day-to-day agency operating budgets, Republicans last month passed legislation cutting food stamps, pension benefits for federal workers, health care and social services programs like Meals on Wheels for the elderly.

Office budgets for members of Congress vary somewhat depending on how far they live from Washington and how expensive it is to rent office space back home. The average office budget is $1.4 million a year, according to the Congressional Research Service, but not every lawmaker spends that much. Staff salaries account for about 70 percent, on average.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care law have been predicting dire consequences for seniors on Medicare ever since the legislation was signed last year. The warnings are mostly political spin, but there could be real problems if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act this month.

The ACA, a cornerstone of President Obama’s health care plan, would extend health insurance to an additional 23 million Americans by 2019. But it’s run into significant roadblocks as opponents argue that key components are un-Constitutional.

The Supreme Court could decide to uphold the law, strike down specific portions or toss it out entirely. A decision is expected by late June.

Important improvements to Medicare would disappear if the high court decides to toss out the entire law. The decision could paralyze the Medicare system because the act lays out the benefits, payment rates and delivery systems. Some of the changes already have been implemented, and others are works in progress.

“If the law is struck down, there will be a high level of chaos and confusion the very next day, especially in Medicare,” predicts Bonnie Washington, senior vice president of Avalere Health, a health policy consulting firm. “Every single provider payment that Medicare makes now has been modified one way or the other by the Affordable Care Act.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, is not commenting on how it might proceed if the law is nullified. But the administration has warned the court of “extraordinary disruption” to the system.

CMS might attempt to assert its own administrative authority – and perhaps use executive orders from President Obama – to continue paying claims and providing benefits so the Medicare system doesn’t freeze up. But disruption will be virtually unavoidable.

Some of this could be fixed with administrative authority,” said Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a non-profit consumer rights group. “But I don’t think most of it would be.”

LOST DRUG COVERAGE

The most immediate change would hit seniors who enter the “doughnut hole” in Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program – the gap in coverage that starts if total annual drug spending by a senior and his or her insurance company exceeds a certain level. In 2012, coverage stops when spending reaches $2,930, and resumes at $4,700.

This year, the Affordable Care Act calls for pharmaceutical companies to provide a 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs to most beneficiaries who find themselves in the gap; there’s also a 14 percent discount on generic drugs.

Last year, 3.6 million seniors hit the gap and saved a collective $2.1 billion due to the health care law, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the first four months of 2012, more than 416,000 people saved an average of $724 on prescription drugs bought after they hit the cap, for a total of $301.5 million. Last year, 3.6 million seniors entered the gap and saved $2.1 billion, the health department says.

The Supreme Court ruling could come just as many seniors hit the gap, and they could lose prescription drug insurance protection they were counting on this year.

“The contracts between the government and pharmaceutical companies are made possible by the ACA,” says Anne Hance, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, who specializes in federal and state health insurance. “If the ACA is struck down, the question will be whether there is still a statutory obligation for the pharmaceutical companies to provide the discounts.”

Pharmaceutical companies could decide to continue the drug discounts voluntarily in order to protect sales of their branded drugs in the Part D program, and to avoid patient shifts to generics. Drug companies also might want to continue the discounts for public relations reasons.

But seniors worried about gap coverage should review the branded drugs they are taking.

“Ask your doctor if there are lower-cost alternatives that you could use if necessary that are just as effective,” says Washington, of Avalere Health.

ENROLLMENT DISCORD

This fall’s enrollment season for prescription drug plans also could be affected by a court ruling. Enrollment runs from mid-October to early December, and pharmaceutical companies are submitting their bids this week to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services based on the terms of the Affordable Care Act.

“The timing for CMS would be very difficult,” says Tricia Neuman, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and director of its Medicare Policy Project. “They would need to scramble very quickly to make decisions on payments for 2013 just as the bids are coming. There wouldn’t be a lot of time to make adjustments.”

Medicare’s new free annual wellness visit and other screening services also could disappear.

Starting next year, seniors could expect to pay higher premiums than they otherwise would have faced for Medicare Part B (physician visits and other outpatient services). The law was expected to reduce Medicare spending by $428 billion between 2010 and 2019, through cuts in payments to doctors and hospitals, and changes in the way health care is delivered, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

If the law is struck down and those savings provisions do not take effect, Medicare spending will rise, which would lead to higher Part B premiums. By law, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sets the Part B premium so that beneficiaries cover 25 percent of the program’s cost.

“That means if Part B spending rises, beneficiaries will pay higher premiums,” Neuman warns.

(The writer is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

The changes, which will eliminate about one-fifth of the automaker’s pension obligations, are intended in part to increase its appeal to investors.

Everyone affected by the change is already retired, and many will be able to spend the money without rolling it over into another retirement account, as long as they pay the appropriate taxes. The company is planning to provide extensive financial counseling to help people make the money last through their retirement years.

G.M. is following a similar move by the Ford Motor Company, which announced last month that it would offer retirees the chance to take their pensions as a single big check. Both automakers are seeking to reduce retiree-related costs.

“Clearly pensions have continued to be a significant issue for General Motors,” said Dan Ammann, G.M.’s chief financial officer, in a conference call with reporters. “It is important for us to mitigate the growth of these obligations.”

G.M.’s stock price fell 19 cents to $22.01 in trading Friday, a comparatively strong showing on a day when other auto shares and the general market were down significantly.

Philip Waldeck, Prudential’s head of pension and structured solutions, called the plan “a breakthrough transaction.”

“I think over time, others will follow,” he said.

Shedding pension obligations might indeed be attractive to other companies, especially those with pension plans so large they have started to overshadow the operating business and cause unpredictable fluctuations in cash flows. But for many companies, it would still be too expensive to pay an insurer to take over their pension obligations since pensions can become more costly to provide when interest rates are low, as they are now. G.M. is benefiting from investment changes it made in the last few years to make the value of its pension assets mirror the value of the obligations even when market conditions change.

In addition, legal changes this year allow companies to offer retirees lump-sum payments that have an equivalent economic value to the stream of monthly pensions they replace. In the past, companies had to pay a premium to retirees if they offered lump sums.

Mr. Ammann said that the pension changes announced on Friday would reduce G.M.’s total obligations, currently $134 billion, by $26 billion. Most of the cost will be paid with money the company had already set aside in its pension fund for salaried workers, but G.M. will put in an additional $4 billion from its corporate coffers.

Unionized hourly workers’ benefits are unaffected by the changes.

G.M. said that even after sending roughly $29 billion of pension assets to Prudential, it will still have $8 billion of assets in the salaried workers’ pension fund. That will leave the plan $2 billion short of the total $10 billion that the company owes its current workers for future pensions. The white-collar workers’ pension plan has been frozen already, and officials said their benefits would be unchanged.

G.M. said that in the coming weeks, about 42,000 of its 118,000 retired salaried workers would get letters offering the chance to trade their regular monthly pension checks for a single upfront payment. Those who choose the big check would receive it by September. The conversion factor for calculating the value of the single check was established by law in 2006.

For retirees who do not accept or are ineligible for the lump sum, G.M. will purchase a group annuity contract from Prudential Insurance to pay and administer the continuing benefits.

Mr. Ammann said that G.M. was anxious to transfer the day-to-day management of its obligations to retirees to Prudential. “It allows us to focus more on our core business, which is building cars and trucks,” he said.

The lump-sum offers will be made to retirees who left G.M. between October of 1997 and December of last year. The size of the offers will vary by age, health, length of corporate service, and current pension benefits.

G.M. will spend $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion to finance the buyouts, buy the group annuities, and create the new plan for existing salaried workers. The company expects to take a charge of as much as $3.5 billion against earnings in the second half of the year for the changes.

It will also lose about $200 million a year in noncash profits that it was allowed to report because of accounting rules that apply to pensions. Those rules have been controversial among investors because they can allow companies to raise their reported earnings without improving the performance of the business.

Ford, for its part, has said it will offer lump-sum pension buyouts to all of its 98,000 white-collar retirees but has not provided details of the payments or how the offer would affect the company’s finances. The first wave of Ford offers is expected in August.