The U.S. House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan's latest budget is another fairy tale like the one he and Romney ran on during the 2012 Presidential campaign. The American people rejected that budget because they understood arithmetic.
Ryan's budget calls for spending cuts totaling $5 trillion over the next 10 years including steep cuts to medicaid, food stamps, a total repeal of the ACA and ending medicare as it exists today in favor of a private insured federal subsidy. It also calls for deficit spending for the next 10 years and a balanced budget in 2024. It should be noted that no republican President has balanced the federal budget since Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 and Ryan wants to extend that another 10 years.
Louisiana's Bill Cassidy in the U.S. House who is challenging democratic senator Mary Landrieu in a report by Bruce Alpert in the Times Picayune of 4/4/14 reported he is on the fence for Ryans budget and that he will evaluate the budget proposal. Cassidy has supported Ryan's previous budget proposal that was similiar. Seems like the coming election in November is now on Cassidy's mind.
The same article reports that Steve Scalise and his conservative republican study committee will offer a more aggressive deficit reduction budget soon. Scalise's study committee proposal includes raising the age to qualify for medicare and full social security benefits. This is a fore runner to eliminate medicare and social security in the future. Ryan indicated his budget is depending on the republicans taking over the Senate in November and controlling both houses of congress.
Never mind that the republicans controlled both houses of congress for the first 6 years of George W. Bush's terms in office and failed to cut spending when they had the chance to do so. In fact the Bush administration turned President Clinton's record balanced budgets and surpluses into deficit spending in Bush's very first fiscal year and all 8 years he served. In fact federal spending went up 61% during his two terms in office. (see my commentary titled, Federal Spending: Facts vs. Myth dated 10/31/09.
The Obama administration has reduced the federal deficit over 60% since Bush's last fiscal year which ended up with a record one year deficit of over $1.4 trillion. And in the last 50 years it has been the administrations of Clinton and Obama that saw the smallest increase in federal spending. Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 don't even come close. The republican party is still living in Wally, Wally world and just recycle their past failures with an ideology of contempt for their own supporters.
It is hell when you have no record of moving the country and its people forward. Is it any wonder why they can not debate the issues or articulate what they stand for?
This commentary written by John Lucia
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