Dueling budget plans debut in Congress

Nice try, Ryan.

Interesting that “dueling budget plans debut” except only one plan has been put forth, no?

Is that why the entire article details the Ryan plan and has zero specifics from the Democratic plan; it still doesn’t exist!

According to CBO, federal revenues are projected to return to their historical level of 18.5-19% of GDP by 2015. That is where they need to be. Outlays never fall below 21.5% of GDP, however. That is unsustainable. Need to cut spending by about 3% of GDP, which works out to about $500 billion/yr, or less. Ryan wants to cut $460 billion/yr, mostly from social programs. We can probably get by with $400 billion/yr, but some needs to come from defense. We still don’t need to spend more than the next 10 countries combined on defense. Cut down on the global policing and redeploy to defend the borders.

Ryan’s program is DOA. Didn’t get the message, him and Mitt lost, people didn’t buy the plan in November, why now?

There has to be a combination of cuts and new revenue. Instead of social programs and health care, cut defense 50%. Get rid of homeland security. Cut corporate loopholes, tax corporate offshore revenue and reduce farm up

Ryan’s program is DOA. Didn’t get the message, him and Mitt lost, people didn’t buy the plan in November, why now?

There has to be a combination of cuts and new revenue. Instead of social programs and health care, cut defense 50%. Get rid of homeland security. Cut corporate loopholes, tax corporate offshore revenue and reduce farm up

Sorry Republicans, but we, the people, have spoken. We want more taxing and more spending. Let’s pass the Democrat’s budget without even looking at it and move on.

Ryan’s plan …. lots of pages and words without much detail.

“Republicans would balance the budget in 10 years with $4.6 trillion in spending cuts, building on earlier proposals for deep reductions to social programs.”

“Democrats say their plan shrinks deficits by $1.85 trillion over 10 years, imposes tax hikes on the wealthy and adds $100 billion in infrastructure spending to boost job growth.”

The above excerpts are the major stumbling block for 99% of the population ever understand the problem or even the issues:

1. Republican are balancing the budget in 10 years….this means that the debt will continue to grow for at least the next 10 years….Is this even sustainable?

2. Republicans are going to cut spending by 4.6 trillion over 10 years…..what does this even mean? Are they cutting spending increases by 4.6 trillion over 10 years?

3. Democrats are going to decrease the deficit by 1.85 trillion over 10 years…..that is only a little more than how much we add to the debt each year! How is this going to accomplish anything?

4. Democrats are going to add 100 billion to infrastructure over 10 years….Is that over 10 years or every year?

5. Democrats are going to impose tax hikes on the rich? Didn’t we just do that? When does it stop. The rich guys are the ones who set prices on the goods we buy….do you think they are just going to pay increased taxes and not raise their prices?

Republicans and Democrats are so far away from an answer that it is scary.

Neither proposal has any chance to pass, and they are so far apart that I don’t see they come close together any time soon. I feel that the only chance for us to have a budget is to have one party dominate both House and Senate. I hope it will happen after next year’s mid-term election.

“The Republican budget foresees $700 billion less in interest payments over the next decade, compared to current policy, because of the slowdown in government borrowing.”

Big deal that’s $70 billion a year your not going to pay out in interest because you did need to borrow the MONEY???

What kind of CRAZY INSANE NONSENSE statement is that?

What about the interest they have to pay on the $16.7 trillion?

So far in the the interest 2013 budget year is $168,446,206,078.52

What will happen if the rate went to 4 or 5%?

Double that number above.

Ryan’s figures are at odds with the CBO. Ryan says reforming the Affordable Care Act would save $1.8T over the next 10 years. According to the CBO the Act actually saves Federal Dollars. Either way Ryan’s plan is so vague that according to the CBO, they won’t review it (verify the numbers). I’m assuming the Democrats plan (which by the way..ACTUALLY does exist) is based on the Presidents plan. You can view that plan at www.whitehouse.org. The President isn’t advocating a specific tax hike, what he is proposing is the the richest pay a minimum of 28% in income taxes. Take all the deductions you want down to 28%. That is a very interesting approach. It avoids an argument over which loopholes to eliminate that would be an endless fight and would never go anywhere. And a 28% tax rate is MORE than fair and would be the historical low for tax rates on the upper income classes. As a upper middle class income family I pay in the low 20′s. Our tax code is supposed to be progressive. I would still like to see those above the poverty line (47% that pay no taxes) pay at least something.

jaham wrote: “Interesting that “dueling budget plans debut” except only one plan has been put forth, no? Is that why the entire article details the Ryan plan and has zero specifics from the Democratic plan; it still doesn’t exist!”

http://democrats.budget.house.gov/sites/democrats.budget.house.gov/files/documents/dem_alt_summary_3.pdf

You really have a serious problem differentiating between things that you don’t like and things that don’t exist, don’t you? Your posts on these boards remind me of a five year old throwing a temper tantrum and covering his ears while yelling “I can’t hear you!”

jaham wrote: “Interesting that “dueling budget plans debut” except only one plan has been put forth, no? Is that why the entire article details the Ryan plan and has zero specifics from the Democratic plan; it still doesn’t exist!”

http://democrats.budget.house.gov/sites/democrats.budget.house.gov/files/documents/dem_alt_summary_3.pdf

You really have a serious problem differentiating between things that you don’t like and things that don’t exist, don’t you? Your posts on these boards remind me of a five year old throwing a temper tantrum and covering his ears while yelling “I can’t hear you!”

A short history lesson for those that do not know….the government, by the founding fathers design, is structured to be in in contention to avoid one party dominating the policy agenda–as the Dems did in 2008-2010 when they passed Obamacare–without a single Republican amendment or vote. We all saw the results of that effort when the Dems lost more seats in a single election than any time in the last 100 years. (In other words, the President and the Dems overreached.)

Those that are under the (false) impression that Obama and the Dems received a mandate in the last election, overlook the fact (again, by design) that the local elections placed a Republican majority to the house. Gridlock is good–as it ensures some degree of balance in government–and keeps the extremes at bay.

4angry…lmao…great post. It’s kind of like “The Point” by Nilsson..”you see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.” If you take him to task on any individual point on any of the plans..he can’t respond. Because he hasn’t read any of them.

COIndependent..the problem is that our Constitution doesn’t guarantee that neither party can take control. What happened to the Democrats based on their performance in 2008-2010, is exactly the same thing that happened to the Republicans after their actions between 2000-2006. They lost both houses. If it were up to me, I’d amend the Constitution so that NO party could ever occupy both Houses of Congress and the Presidency at the same time.

xyz….I appreciate your frustration, but unless you believe in a “living constitution” you cannot protect the electorate from itself. One only has to look at the Beltway, Sacramento, Albany, Springfield…as prime examples of where the gaming of the system has served to penalize the populace.

The only solution is term limits and limiting Congress to a defined number of days each year. If a President can only serve eight years, why do we have people “serving” (themselves?) for 30-40-50 years.

If we limited terms we might have a chance of limiting the influence and corruption.

can anybody tell me why the second amendment was put in place by our fore-fathers in the first place.

COIndependent…how does the voting public re-elect virtually 90+ percent of the same people back to Congress when going into the elections Congress had a single digit approval rating? AND I’m not pointing fingers here. Both sides are guilty. Your comment about protecting the electorate from it’s self is dead on! Einstein’s definition of insanity? If people absolutely must vote the party line couldn’t they at least vote new blood in?

If the American people were interested in the Republican budget or repealing Affordable Care Act, we would have elected Romney. Ryan somehow needs to get the message and stop beating a dead horse and govern

If they could only meet in the middle! Let’s do raise taxes a little, lower the estate tax exemption, cut Medicaid (has many fraudulent recipients) and even Medicare a tiny bit, tighten the requirements for disability, raise the age for full social security by one year (no more), shorten unemployment compensation, and finally decrease spending on subsidized housing in big cities. Both sides have to give and not get entrenched in party ideology. If these moves could pass we would be home free!

What elections have boiled down to in our country isn’t ideologic, it’s money. The Supreme Court opened a can of worms when they essentially allowed unlimited campaign funding. The guy that spends the most money generally wins. Incumbents have a HUGE advantage. Two ideas to level the field and stop the influence and corruption are either term limits or all federal campaigns are funded by the public and everyone gets exactly the same amount of money to spend. However, getting the “gravy train” crowd (those already elected to Congress) to write and pass either of those pieces of legislation is a long shot.

So what this time?! Cuts are cuts. I’m not sure that newly negotiated cuts would be any more pleasing to my sensibilities than these. So what that we will scale back on our wars, TSA, garbage educational programs. Let’s just keep these cuts. It hurst the republicans more than the democrats anyway. I’m only disappointed that Congressional benefits remain unaffected.

time to vote a whole new congress and senate.

Meh…why is this still news?

Military spending in each year from 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 was at a low of 2225 Billion to $300 Billion each budget year. A explanation of the current 2013 budget of $650 billion compares this year with the revised current value of the earlier years budget in today’s dollars. A example could be that year 2004 was $275 billion and that is $475 billion in today’s dollars or say $475 billion. Then each preceding year increases accordingly. So when you see 2013 at $650 billion it is really not as big as your thinking and much of the spending increase is in paying for the costs of two wars for that time period. That is a explanation I read on a government site.

Too bad Clinton is not president. Then we would really cut spending. When clinto left office he was spending at 18% of GDP while taxing at 20% of GDP. Obama spends at 25% of GDP. To get to clinton levels Obama would need to slash spending by 25%!!

costag1…we had major gridlock when Clinton was President. They impeached him if you don’t remember. The Republicans shut down the Federal government twice over debt ceiling battles. Not Clinton, not any President controls either spending or taxes. For either of those activities to occur, the legislation first has to be written and passed by Congress. In addition, during the Clinton administration we experienced the largest peace time expansion in history. 21 million new private sector jobs were created. SEcond all time was during the Reagan administration when 14M new private sector jobs were created (and they still managed to double the debt). All the taxes from those 21M new jobs goes a long long way to fixing almost any economy.

So the choice is to balance the budget in 10 years on the backs of the old and sick.

Or budget to grow jobs and the economy and let increased revenue do the lifting.

Republicanism looks more like satanism from here.

@4ngry…LOL, thanks for the link. Does it strike you as odd that the Democratic budget is 4 pages long and the Ryan budget is 99 pages?

Again, Democrats have not put their budget proposal forth yet. They wouldn’t even let the Senate review the budget 24 hours in advance before their markup session, which, of course conveys the utmost sincerity in this process from Democrats.

This all goes without mentioning that Obama’s proposal is supposed to come before both houses of Congress…how convenient…But, no, our President would never put politics over leading the country.

4angry..you were right! jaham’s comments DO remind me of a 5 year old throwing a temper tantrum!

And Reuters carries water for the Democrats again! They did not base this article upon the actual Democrat document – they just took at face value what the Democrats said about it.

How about some actual reporting, Reuters? You should be ashamed of yourself. Maybe you can hire some real journalists?