Ryan proposes balanced budget by 2024

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Fox News: Rep. Ryan unveils House GOP plan to balance budget, cut $5T in spending

WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan renewed a fight with Democrats over spending cuts and deficit reduction, unveiling an updated Republican budget plan Tuesday that aims to cut spending by more than $5 trillion over a decade and balance the budget in that time.

Similar to past proposals, Ryan's plan would include cuts to food stamps and major changes to government-sponsored health care for the poor and working class. Ryan's plan would also cut Pell Grants for low-income students and pensions for federal workers, while steering away from cuts to benefits for senior citizens, at least in the short term.

"This is a plan to balance the budget and create jobs, and it builds off a simple fact: We can't keep spending money we don't have," Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement.

Unlike many spending proposals floating around the Hill, Ryan's aims to balance the budget within 10 years, in part by cutting more than $5.1 trillion. Whether that plan would actually work remains to be seen -- and, as in past budget cycles, Democrats made clear they would not be supporting his approach.

Ryan's plan, which is tailored to fit within the structure of the Ryan-Murray Pact that endorses greater funding for agency operating budgets next year, would cut $2.1 trillion over 10 years in health care subsidies and coverage under the Affordable Care Act, $732 billion in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, and almost $1 trillion in cuts to other benefit programs like food stamps, Pell Grants, and farm subsidies. But it would also gut the ACA while continuing its shell structure, particularly tax revenues and cuts to insurance providers relative to their underwriting of the Medicare Advantage plans.

It's bold, it's clever, it's a great idea -- all of which doom it before it ever gets to the full House floor.

 

[InTheLight]

I'm all for it. But why no mention of defense cuts? Interesting.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

I'm all for it. But why no mention of defense cuts? Interesting.

We've already cut defense to the bone and the Little Marxist Dictator wants to cut it some more. We can't afford to cut defense. What we make up in revenue the world loses in the decline of our ability to act as a buffer between freedom and tyranny.

That may sound trite, but it a necessary role and one we do not want anyone else fulfilling. Cries of "U.S. Imperialism" and "empire building" and "spreading democracy at the point of a gun" are so much bull excrement. The fact is, as Colin Powell said as I paraphrase, we've never asked for one inch of land more than what is is sufficient to bury our dead.

 

[InTheLight]

We've already cut defense to the bone and the Little Marxist Dictator wants to cut it some more. We can't afford to cut defense.

Defense makes up about 20% of the federal budget and there simply is nothing whatsoever that can be cut out of it? Not one weapons program. Nothing.

What we make up in revenue the world loses in the decline of our ability to act as a buffer between freedom and tyranny.

And that job as buffer--that's written in our Constitution as our responsibility? I'm all for the U.S. to be a superpower and to be vanguards of freedom, but there's got to be some cuts in defense.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Defense makes up about 20% of the federal budget and there simply is nothing whatsoever that can be cut out of it? Not one weapons program. Nothing.

SO WHAT??? Entitlements make up 70%, and growing every year. Sick to death of people blaming the military budget when it is the socialist programs that are breaking our bank.

And that job as buffer--that's written in our Constitution as our responsibility?

No, it isn't. But it is the natural role of the nation most likely to act with responsibility and respect for other nations. Some may not like it, but frankly, I don't care. If the U.S. had not chosen that role in World War I and World War II, all of Europe and a good portion of West Asia would be speaking German today, and the rest of the world except for the U.S., Canada and Mexico, would be speaking Japanese. It works. It needs to be left in place, because no one else, even in our own depleted moral state, can be trusted morally to take that role on.

 

[InTheLight]

SO WHAT??? Entitlements make up 70%, and growing every year. Sick to death of people blaming the military budget when it is the socialist programs that are breaking our bank.

And entitlements are being cut $5 trillion, as they should be. Military $0, doesn't fly with me.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

And entitlements are being cut $5 trillion, as they should be. Military $0, doesn't fly with me.

Cutting entitlements by $5 trillion over the next five years is a only a ten percent cut compared to overall entitlement payouts in the last five years. The Little Marxist Dictator's budgets have averaged $3.38 trillion over five years.

That means, at a minimum of 70% of those expenditures being for entitlements, we've spent $11.8 trillion in entitlements. During that same time, our military budget has averaged $624 billion. Over five years, that's $3.1 trillion, and since the LMD backed us out of Iraq and is winding down Afghanistan whether they're ready or not, the 2015 is much less than the previous four.

So you tell me: What needs to be cut? If you say "the military," you oughta be