What's in the Republican budget plan?

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled a budget today that looks extremely similar to last year's plan with one major difference: it eliminates the budget deficit in 10 years rather than the 25+ years in his past plans.

Democrats predicted that acceleration to balance the budget to lead to an even more divisive budget filled with unpopular cuts to domestic programs that benefit the poor.

Play Video

Ryan: Obama won't likely heed all my budget suggestions

Ryan's budget blueprint for fiscal year 2014, titled "The Path to Prosperity," does include the same cuts and reforms to Medicaid, food stamps and education programs that were in his last budget and limits future spending growth to just 3.4 percent down from 4.9 percent.

The plan claims deficit reduction over the next 10 years totaling $4.6 trillion, which is really accomplished by curbing that future spending instead of actual new cuts, is also similar to his last plan that Democrats painted as too severe.

"Our opponents will shout austerity, but let's put this in perspective," Ryan wrote in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal. "On the current path, we'll spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. Under our proposal, we'll spend $41 trillion. On the current path, spending will increase by 5% each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4%. Because the U.S. economy will grow faster than spending, the budget will balance by 2023, and debt held by the public will drop to just over half the size of the economy."

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Ryan admitted in an interview Sunday that the budget will balance faster largely due to the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached earlier this year. That gave Ryan's deficit-cutting efforts a boost by raising over $600 billion in new revenue through higher taxes on families making over $450,000 a year and individuals making $400,000.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has vowed that President Obama will not get any more tax revenue from House Republicans and Ryan's budget sticks to that. His blueprint once again proposes closing tax loopholes and using the savings there to lower rates for all individuals and businesses instead of putting that money towards deficit reduction.

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Balancing budget not possible with Obamacare, Ryan says

Ryan also included language once again proposing to defund the President's health care law despite the Supreme Court upholding the law. And on Medicare, Ryan stuck to his controversial proposal to overhaul the health program for seniors for everyone now under 55. The budget chairman had toyed with the idea of raising that age level to accomplish more savings, but did not find members willing to break their promise that any Medicare changes would only hit people now under the age of 55.

The budget would also shield the Defense Department from the sequester for the next 10 years.

One thing is clear, this budget is very different from what is expected from Senate Democrats tomorrow or from the president next month. Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., plans to introduce a budget that raises taxes on the wealthy and does not aim to balance the budget deficit.

Below are 10 major elements of Ryan's 2014 budget proposal:

1. Repeal Obamacare

"The Path to Prosperity" explicitly states that the budget "repeals the President's onerous health-care law. Instead of putting health-care decisions into the hands of bureaucrats, Congress should pursue patient-centered health-care reforms that actually bring down the cost of care by empowering consumers." Ryan specifically laments both the massive Medicaid expansion in the health care law and the subsidies provided by government to help individuals purchase health insurance. He calls the subsidies an "enormous market distortion."

Repealing the health care bill would account for $1.8 trillion in Ryan's deficit reduction. Ryan defends including health care repeal in the budget despite the Supreme Court upholding the law and the fact that President Obama would veto any repeal bill. Ryan told "Fox News Sunday" that it was included because Republicans "believe that Obamacare is a program that will not work. We believe Obamacare will actually lead to hospitals and doctors and health care providers turning people away."

Ryan proposes repealing "Obamacare and "enacting medical-liability reform, ensuring Americans can purchase quality coverage across state lines, and expanding access to consumer-directed healthcare options."

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[sickofwhiners]

More of the same.........

[Protect_US_Jobs]

Wouldn't it be More Productive if Our Elected Leaders Started Working Together as AMERICANS for AMERICANS and AMERICA, instead of just bickering, stalling and posturing for the next election as democrats and republicans! The American People have had it with this unproductive BS! The way that both parties having been operating for years just stinks! Neither party has really been looking out for the best interests of the US Citizens who elect them and who they're supposed to represent.

Both parties have sold out the bulk of the American citizens, who they're supposed to represent, by allowing the "out-sourcing" floodgates to open wider and wider without taking any sensible measures to stem the tide.

It shouldn't be all about Democrats or Republicans! It should be about Americans, especially our elected officials, doing the right thing for our country and its citizens. All the single-minded, left versus right, ideological one dimensional bull has got to go!

Both parties need to start working together and actually start doing something to fix the real problems in our country like "out-sourcing", illegal immigration, the out of control costs of health care insurance and our reliance on foreign fuel. If they don't start working together and actually start making progress by the next election, then American citizens should run a nation-wide campaign to vote out all incumbents regardless of party to send the message.

The ONLY REAL FIX is to Raise Revenue, by Bringing Back Jobs to US Citizens who Pay Income Tax.

Massive cutting just puts more people on unemployment, which just depresses the economy even further.

Returning private sector jobs to American Citizens will provide income tax revenue to OUR Government versus our government having to pay unemployment benefits to those who would be jobless instead. We need our elected officials to Start Protecting American Jobs and do whatever it takes to bring back the jobs they let go. We need leaders who will actually stand up for the American people.

The bottom line is that "Our Government" has to protect domestic industry and the jobs that those industries provide. If they do that, the rest will take care of itself.

We may have to pay a bit more for products made here in the USA by US citizens, but at least we'll still have jobs and a future for our children.

And yes - I'm Angry - As are most American Citizens right now!

[truthsayer1]

I wonder if any of these low information commentators realize our crushing national debt is approaching $17 Trillion?

[TimeToEvolve]

Does anyone else wonder what the same Republicons who never say an expense they did not like under Bushoccio are suddenly screeching about the debt?

Or why the same political party that has sworn to drown the government in a bathtub are soooo concerned about it's economic health?

[TimeToEvolve]

My guess is that the "plan" is more Ayn Randian garbage that could be summed up in six words: More Tax Cuts For The Rich.

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

yellow_louie says: "didn't as a result federal revenues go UP as an end result?"




Despite what many republican Supply-Side fantasists maintain, tax cuts always deprive the Treasury of revenues, and even the 1964 Demand-Side cuts were no exception. Whether the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut achieved its desired economic stimulus is a matter of some dispute.

Bruce Bartlett was, in 1981, staff economist to Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., an architect of the big reagan tax cut (and also ryan's mentor). Bartlett gave the 1964 cut close study at the time. He says it recouped about one-third of its revenue loss through economic stimulus.

But according to a recent Congressional Research Service survey, there's no clear evidence that tax cuts have ever stimulated economic growth, going all the way back to 1945, and have definitely never paid for themselves.

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

Kennedy did push tax cuts, and his plan, which passed in February 1964, three months after his death (even with GOP obstruction), did help spur economic growth. But republican ideologues are wrong to see the tax reduction as a Supply-Side cut, like reagan's and bush's; it was a Demand-Side cut. "The Revenue Act of 1964 was aimed at the demand, rather than the supply side of the economy," said Arthur Okun, one of Kennedy's economic advisers.

This distinction, taught in Economics 101, seldom makes it into the Washington sound-bite wars. A demand-side cut rests on the Keynesian theory that public consumption spurs economic activity. Government puts money in people's hands, as a temporary measure, so that they'll spend it. A supply-side cut sees business investment as the key to growth. Government gives money to businesses and wealthy individuals to invest, ultimately "trickling-down" to other Americans.

Back in the early 1960s, tax cutting was as contentious as it is today, but it was liberal demand-siders who were calling for the cuts and generating the controversy, while the republicans were opposing it and voting against it!


The Myth of JFK as Supply Side Tax Cutter

John Kennedy was no Ronald Reagan on taxes, despite what some conservatives might claim

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/01/26/the-myth-of-jfk-as-supply-side-tax-cutter

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

In 1964 Congress passed, and Lyndon Johnson signed into law, a big income-tax cut that had originally been proposed by John F. Kennedy. The top marginal rate dropped from 91 percent to 70 percent, which represented a 23 percent cut. The bottom rate dropped from 20 percent to 14 percent, which represented a 30 percent cut. The middle rates dropped from 59 and 62 percent to 45 percent, which represented a cut of 24 percent to 27 percent.

So we start out with one significant difference between the Kennedy and the republican "SUPPLY-SIDE" plan. Republicans always want to lower taxes by the same amount for all brackets, high and low like romney/ryan in 2012, or heavily-weighted towards the top like reagan/bush. Kennedy (really, Johnson) lowered taxes more at the middle and especially at the bottom than he did at the top.

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

The giveaway that Kennedy's wasn't really a supply-side tax cut was that the cuts were greater in the middle and at the bottom than at the top. If you want to stimulate consumer purchasing, you're better off concentrating income-tax cuts in the middle and at the bottom. If you want to stimulate investment, you're better off concentrating income-tax cuts at the top -- or, if that's politically impossible, you make the cuts the same across the board.

Ronald Reagan's tax cut in 1981 was pretty obviously a supply-side cut because it lowered the top tax rate more than it did rates at the middle or the bottom. After it passed, White House budget chief David Stockman got in a lot of trouble for admitting what was obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention: The only cuts Reagan cared about were those at the top. "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,'" Stockman blurted out to William Greider in the Atlantic, "so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

YELLOW_BELLY replies: "Kennedy started trickledown"




No, Kennedy proposed DEMAND SIDE ECONOMICS -- completely the opposite of "SUPPLY-SIDE economic insanity," otherwise known as "trickle-down," or "VooDoo economics" as poppy bush called it!

Kennedy proposed, while the GOP obstructed it, DEMAND-SIDE economics which says that if taxes are to be cut, they should go to those who earn the least amount of money. The reason is that low-income workers spend virtually all of their incomes. Money given to them goes right back into circulation, fueling a boom in consumer spending. When finally passed after Kennedy's death, the DEMAND-SIDE tax cuts were targeting the middle and lower classes -- not the wealthy like reagan and bush!

Bill Clinton reversed reagan's Supply-Side policies, raising taxes on the wealthy and lowering them on the working and middle class. This Demand-Side formula was fiercely resisted by republican leaders in Congress who predicted a stock market crash and another Great Depression. What happened?

The economy produced the longest sustained expansion in U.S. history. It created more than 22 million new jobs, the highest level of job creation ever recorded. Unemployment fell to its lowest level in over 30 years. Inflation fell to 2.5% per year compared to the 4.7% average over the prior 12 years. And overall economic growth averaged 4.0% per year compared to 2.8% average growth over the 12 years of the reagan/bush administrations.

It wasn't even close. The economy performed dramatically better in almost every way once Supply-Side policies were replaced with Demand-Side policies, that Kennedy had originally proposed.

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

The most dramatic outcome was the reversal of the reagan-era Supply-Side deficits. Clinton's Demand-Side policies not only paid down the Reagan/Bush deficits, they produced the first budgetary surpluses since 1969. By the time Clinton left office, the government was running surpluses of almost $140 billion per year. This is what he turned over to george WMD bush in January of 2001.

Bush, of course, returned to the Supply-Side policies of reagan and his father. He lowered taxes on the very rich -- his base as he calls them. His $1.6 trillion in tax cuts give 45% of the benefits to the top 1% of the population. It is classic Supply-Side economics. What happened?

By virtually every measure, the economy has performed worse in this business cycle than was typical of past ones.

[FOX_PARROTS_LIE]

Supply-Side economics (trickle-down) rewards the rich both coming and going. Higher government debt leads to higher interest rates for all borrowing or in their case, lending. And then, they get to pay lower and lower taxes on their higher and higher earnings. It is a magical two-fer worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, with the wealthy having seen huge gains during bushworld, while the middle class has seen declines and stagnation.

[The_Bad_Ranger_Rides_Away]

Here you go T4T --- a funny I posted below ....

Democrat budget: Sunshine, lollipops, unicorns and rainbows, everybody holding hands and singing Kum Bay Yah.

Republican budget: Old ladies pushed over cliffs, rich white people eating said unicorns, starving middle-schoolers with no music programs, roaming the streets with assault rifles.


<smile>

[Think4times]

Yea I saw this already.

I didn't reply last time because it's just nonsense.

[The_Bad_Ranger_Rides_Away]

Hummm -- I thought it was pretty funny - I was trying to show what each side thinks of each other

Never mind

[TimeToEvolve]

The sad, sorry historical facts are that the Republicons are completely fiscally irresponsible. Every time one of them is President we have massive unemployment, poverty, spending and debt. I give you Reagan and the Bushes.

These are the facts and the CONS prove it just by claiming THEY are fiscally conservative. What a joke.

[Think4times]

I just want to say that IMO, it's not fiscally irresponsible, and it's not just one party.

They are both fiscally incompetent.