Posted by Tina
The GOP’s Alternative Budget, by Paul D. Ryan Wall Street Journal
** Today, the House of Representatives will consider two budget plans that represent dramatically different visions for our nation’s future. *** We will first consider President Barack Obama’s plan. To be clear, this is no ordinary budget. In a nutshell, the president and Democratic leaders in Congress are attempting to bring about the third and final great wave of progressivism, building on top of the New Deal and the Great Society. So America is placed in a special moment in our history — brought about by the deep recession, Mr. Obama’s ambitious agenda, and the pending fiscal tidal-wave of red ink brought forward by the looming insolvency of our entitlement programs. If this agenda comes to pass, it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European. *** House Republicans will offer an alternative plan. This too is no ordinary budget. As the opposition party, we believe this moment must be met by offering the American people a different way forward — one based on our belief that America is an exceptional nation, and we want to keep it that way. Our budget applies our country’s enduring first principles to the problems of our day. Rather than attempting to equalize the results of peoples’ lives and micromanaging their affairs, we seek to preserve our system of protecting our natural rights and equalizing opportunity for all. The plan works to accomplish four main goals: 1) fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; 2) control our nation’s debts; 3) put the economy on a path of growth and leadership in the global economy; and 4) preserve the American legacy of leaving the next generation better off. **
*
** Under the president’s plan, spending will top $4 trillion this year alone, and consume 28.5% of our nation’s economy. His plan would mean a $1 trillion increase to the already unsustainable spending growth of our nation’s entitlement programs — including a “down payment” toward government-controlled health care and education; a $1.5 trillion tax increase to further shackle the small businesses and investors we rely on to create jobs; a massive increase in energy costs for families via cap and trade. Moreover, the Obama plan would result in an exploding deficit, a doubling of the nation’s debt in five years, and an increase of that debt to more than 82% of our nation’s GDP by the last year of the budget. This approach will ultimately debase our currency and reduce the living standards of the American people. *** Instead of doubling the debt in five years, and tripling it in 10, the Republican budget curbs the explosion in spending called for by the president and his party. Our plan halts the borrow-and-spend philosophy that brought about today’s economic problems, and puts a stop to heaping ever-growing debt on future generations — and it does so by controlling spending, not by raising taxes. The greatest difference lies in the size of government our budgets achieve over time. **
Follow the WSJ link to view a graph that illustrates the difference in the two plans with repect to future debt…it’s pretty dramatic.
The following articles might also be of interest:
A Budget Plan Good Enough To Read Investors Business Daily
** During both the recession of the early 1980s and the post-9/11 economic downturn, Washington successfully used big tax cuts to revive the economy. This time the other party is running both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re getting some different medicine: trillions upon trillions of taxpayers’ dollars spent, a reneging on the president’s promise not to hike taxes on the middle class and the poor, and expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
Meanwhile, the president seems determined to establish a government health program that’s sure to elbow out private plans, rob patients of their power of choice, and Frenchify American medicine. *** Our inevitable entitlement crisis, festering beneath the rug under which politicians have kept it for so many years, is entirely unaddressed in the Democrats’ massive tax-and-spend plans. **
GOP’s Ryan: Budget ‘Exploits The Economic Crisis’
** While President Obama’s proposed budget rolls through the House and Senate, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the key lawmakers putting together an alternative plan. *** As the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, he will be the one to deliver that plan to the House floor next week. On Thursday, House Republicans released an 18-page pamphlet, “The Republican Road to Recovery,” which outlines their break with the president’s budget goals. *** “We don’t think it’s right to impose a $1.9 trillion tax increase on our economy during a recession, so we’re not going to raise taxes,” Ryan tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. “No. 2, we don’t think it’s right to have a huge slew of borrowing they’re doubling our national debt in five and half years, tripling it in just over 10 years. So we think we need to focus on controlling spending and reforming government. *** “We don’t think the answer is to borrow and spend our way to prosperity, so we’re not going to propose all this new spending they’re proposing and that’s going to help us save money and reduce our borrowing costs.” *** Some experts do advise spending as a way to lift the country out of a recession, but Ryan says the Republicans disagree. *** And, further, he says, “If you believe that spending is the key to creating jobs and prosperity, then it ought to happen right now in the recession. More than half of all of this $1.2 trillion in new spending they’re proposing doesn’t even occur until 2011 and beyond.” **