Ryan says GOP budget will reduce deficits by $4.4 trillion, spend $6.2 trillion less than Obama
Beltway Confidential
By: Philip Klein 04/04/11 7:41 PM
House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Tuesday will release a 10-year budget plan that claims to reduce deficits by $4.4 trillion and spend $6.2 trillion less than President Obama proposed in his budget, Ryan wrote in an op-ed posted on the Wall Street Journal's website.
The proposal, according to Ryan, will also reduce spending to below 20 percent of gross domestic product, returning it to the post-war average. It would return discretionary spending to below the 2008 levels, and then keep it there for five years.
"The savings proposals are numerous, and include reforming agricultural subsidies, shrinking the federal work force through a sensible attrition policy, and accepting Defense Secretary Robert Gates's plan to target inefficiencies at the Pentagon," he wrote.
The proposal would also block grant Medicaid to states and change Medicare for those under 55 into a system that would allow beneficiaries to choose among subsidized plans. The value of the subsidy would vary so that poorer and sicker beneficiaries would receive more than richer and healthier ones.
"Our budget targets corporate welfare, starting by ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that is costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars," he writes. "It gets rid of the permanent Wall Street bailout authority that Congress created last year. And it rolls back expensive handouts for uncompetitive sources of energy, calling instead for a free and open marketplace for energy development, innovation and exploration."
His plan, called the "Path to Prosperity," would also simplify the tax code by eliminatinating loopholes and deductions and bringing down corporate and individual rates so that the changes are revenue neutral.
Ryan cites work done by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects suggesting that "the plan will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year and bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade."
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