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First Posted: 3/12/2013
WASHINGTON — House Republicans unveiled their latest budget outline on Tuesday, sticking to their plans to try to repeal so-called Obamacare, cut domestic programs ranging from Medicaid to college grants and require future Medicare patients to bear more of the program’s cost.
The point is to prove it’s possible to balance the budget within 10 years by simply cutting spending and avoiding further tax hikes, even though the fiscal blueprint released Tuesday by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will be dead on arrival with the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate.
The latest Ryan plan generally resembles prior ones, relying on higher tax revenues enacted in January and improved Medicare cost estimates — along with somewhat sharper spending cuts — to promise balance.
Senate Democrats plan to offer a counterproposal today with higher spending on domestic programs and additional tax hikes on top of the higher rates imposed on top-bracket earners in January.
That plan will, in turn, arrive as a dead letter in the GOP-controlled House.
The partisan exercise comes even as President Barack Obama travels to Capitol Hill later on Tuesday to meet with Senate Democrats in an attempt to resuscitate his failed efforts for bipartisanship.
“On the current path, we’ll spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. Under our proposal, we’ll spend $41 trillion,” Ryan said in an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal. “On the current path, spending will increase by 5 percent each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4 percent.”
Ryan’s plan promises to cut the deficit from $845 billion this year to $528 billion in the 2014 budget year that starts in October. It would drop to $125 billion in 2015 and hover pretty much near balance for several years before registering a $7 billion surplus in 2023.
The White House weighed in against the Ryan plan, saying it would turn Medicare into a voucher program and protect the wealthy from tax increases.