Posted on 04/06/2011 10:20:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Democrats are not very fond of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). That’s no secret. But even liberals used to offer some faint praise for Ryan’s courage in writing a plan to reduce the deficit — before lambasting that very plan as a heartless assault on America’s kids and grandmothers.
Those days are likely gone forever now that Ryan has unveiled his 2012 budget proposal: “The Path to Prosperity,” a bold but politically risky plan to reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion over ten years. It achieves big savings in part by significantly reforming entitlement programs, specifically Medicare and Medicaid. Now that Ryan holds real power in the House, he is a much bigger target, and Democrats are wasting no time attacking his budget, setting the tone for what is sure to be a very noxious debate in the months (and years) ahead.
On Tuesday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, led the charge. “Behind the sunny rhetoric of reform, the Republican budget represents the rigid ideological agenda that extends tax cuts to the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of America — except this time on steroids,” Van Hollen told reporters at press conference. “That’s not courageous; it’s wrong.”
Throughout the day, while conservatives were heaping praise on Ryan’s effort, Democrats formed ranks on Capitol Hill, firing out statements and lining up at press conferences to denounce his budget as “the same tired old playbook” from the GOP. The unfailingly clever House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) took to calling it “a path to poverty.” Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.) railed against Ryan’s “path to despair” — which, if enacted, would “would kick seniors and children to the curb.”
But it was Van Hollen who assumed the lead role, and understandably so. He confirmed to reporters Tuesday morning that House Democrats would soon release their own “alternative budget.” Van Hollen was short on details, but indicated that the Democratic proposal would include “significant deficit reduction.”
It should be fairly easy to predict what their plan might look like, judging by the some of the most frequent attacks leveled against Ryan’s budget. First, Democrats hate the fact that Ryan failed to include dramatic tax increases in his budget. Expect to hear a lot of rehashing of the same debate that played out over the lame-duck session in December over the extension of the Bush-era tax rates. Obama’s budget raises taxes on high earners; Ryan’s lowers them.
Van Hollen seized on a statement from the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission — former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.) — that, despite praising Ryan’s “constructive contribution” to the debate, ultimately determined that it “falls short of the balanced, comprehensive approach needed” because it relies too heavily on spending cuts and not enough on revenue increases.
Health-care policy is another obvious sticking point for Democrats. For one, Ryan’s budget fully repeals and defunds Obamacare. Democrats, well aware of the new law’s flagging popularity, may not wish to relitigate the health-care debate, but in many ways Ryan’s budget has forced their hand. As President Obama has indicated, Democrats believe they’ve already done their part to address Medicare costs. Expect to hear many repeat the point that Van Hollen made Tuesday — that when Democrats made cuts to Medicare as part of health-care reform, Republicans ran aggressively against those cuts in 2010.
Van Hollen denounced Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare into a subsidized-voucher program as “Orwellian,” arguing that it was akin to “destroying the village in order to save it.” Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D., Pa.) added that Ryan’s plan “should scare every senior in this country.” As Medicaid, which Ryan seeks to transform into a “block grant” system to give state governors greater flexibility in their budgets, there will likely be no end to the tales of children suffering under Ryan’s brutal regime.
Ryan and his colleagues are well aware of the political firestorm and Democratic demagoguery they are exposing themselves to by releasing such an audacious proposal. “As far as politically, it’s not safe,” says Rep. James Lankford (R., Okla.), a freshman member of the Budget Committee. “I don’t think I’ve found anyone who has said ‘that was the safe way to go.’ But I think it’s right.”
“We are giving them a political weapon to [use] against us,” Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. “But they will have to lie and demagogue to make it a weapon. . . . Shame on them if they do that.”
The shame has already begun.
— Andrew Stiles is a 2011 Franklin Fellow.
Steven Hayward Observes:
The liberal reaction to Paul Ryan’s budget plan makes it evident that liberals are more terrified than they’ve been since Jack Kemp (one of Ryan’s mentors) advanced supply-side economics back in the late 1970s. And although Ryan may not run for president next year, it is clear that just as Ronald Reagan had to embrace the Kemp-Roth tax-cut plan in his 1980 campaign, the eventual GOP nominee will have to embrace Ryan’s budget plan if he or she is going to be taken seriously by the party, and especially the Tea Party.
As Kemp’s understanding of supply-side economics was about more than just tax rates and revenues, Ryan’s budget architecture is about much more than just fiscal balances, and this is what terrifies liberals the most. The most interesting twist on the whole matter, though, is whether Ryan’s plan would eviscerate the welfare state (cue Nancy Pelosi, et al.), or rescue it within reasonable limits.
Obama skips debt commission meeting (Dec. 2010)
WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Obama did not attend a White House meeting Thursday with members of his own debt commission, irking some of the Democrats on the panel who were expecting a high-level push from the commander-in-chief to show that its comprehensive deficit reduction plan is being taken seriously by the White House.
“He should have at least dropped by,” one Democratic member of the debt commission told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wanted to speak more freely about the panel’s private meeting.
A second senior Democratic aide close to the panel added that commission members were miffed and privately believe the President did not attend because it would have been awkward “given the fact that he has just endorsed $900 billion in deficit spending” with the tax cut deal.
http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/09/obama-skips-debt-commission-meeting/
yeah, the Dems care.
How many years? How many years before we crash altogether with the democrat plan? The consequences are too great to ignore the problem of government over-spending.
The only thing missing from Ryan’s fiscally sane budget proposal is the institution of a optional penalty tax on registered Democrats who could elect to pay higher marginal income tax rates to fund the higher levels of entitlement spending they want to continue.In exchange for electing to pay the Democrat penalty tax, said Democrat will be entitled to the higher level of entitlements than the rest of us. How many Democrats do you think would choose to pay for their own entitlements today rather than sending the bill to everyone’s grandchildren?
The concern for those who will supposedly suffer under Ryan’s cuts, considering the state of our economy, is like the Captain of the Titanic being worried about sea sickness among the passengers. The entire economy is in a death spiral and we are spending too much. The only choice is significant cuts.
“Onslaught from the left consists of the same old scare tactics.”
The Demonrats have Halloween all year long.
Even Paul Ryan commented that he’d already been hit with the ‘forcing old people to eat cat food’ line. He’s fully aware of the stupidity that will be coming his way regarding the cuts he’s proposing.
“The eventual GOP nominee will have to embrace Ryan’s budget plan if he or she is going to be taken seriously by the party, and especially the Tea Party.”
Ryan’s budget is NOT a Tea Party budget. It is a Republican budget. The tables where he lists the details show that his budget will not be balanced until after his tables end in 2021.
budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf (3.7MB)
Go through that budget and find the exact year where it balances. I haven’t found it yet. Looking at the table on page 66, it is somewhere between 2030 and 2040.
Sooner than you can imagine even with Ryan’s plan. According to his plan, our deficit THIS year will be $1.388 trillion. Estimates for this year are coming in at $1.645 trillion. Oops!
Ryan has no plan to cut the deficit to less than $700billion by 2013. Given his inability to count the deficit this year and the Republican’s need to “meet the democrats half way”, we can expect the debt to GDP ratio to reach the critical 100% within six years.
Take this year’s debt of $10,300billion, add the deficit each year to that and when it reaches around $14,500 billion, that’s it. We are done.
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