When House Budget chair Rep. Paul Ryan rolled out his budget plan for FY2013 and beyond, a few conservatives expressed disappointment in the result. Ryan didn’t cut spending as much as they wanted, and his plan took too long to get to a balanced budget. The Republican Study Committee will release their own version of the budget today — although members will commit to voting for both their own and Ryan’s plans:
House conservatives on Tuesday morning will tack to the right and unveil an alternative to the House GOP leadership’s 2013 budget plan that balances in five years.
House conservatives on Tuesday morning will tack to the right and unveil an alternative to the House GOP leadership’s 2013 budget plan that balances in five years.
The new Republican Study Committee (RSC) spending plan has deeper cuts than the group’s budget for last year, which would have balanced the budget in nine years. The leadership budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), takes until nearly 2040 to balance. …
Whereas the Ryan plan resembles proposals by presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the RSC plan more closely resembles the Tea Party budget put forth this month by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
That budget cuts $9 trillion in spending over 10 years, compared to $5.3 trillion in the Ryan plan.
Not to be outdone, liberal Democrats in the House will propose an alternate budget of their own. Needless to say, it won’t go in the same direction from Ryan’s budget proposal:
Meanwhile, liberal House Democrats on Monday unveiled a 2013 budget alternative that increases taxes by $4.7 trillion more than President Obama proposed in his own budget last month.
Liberals get $897 billion in tax revenue from imposing an energy tax on carbon fuels, and $849 billion from taxing Wall Street trades.
Why all the new revenue? Democrats want to spend it on new stimulus spending — in fact, almost four times as much stimulus spending as Obama got in 2009. Their proposal calls for almost $3 trillion in government spending, which will supposedly lower unemployment and “rebuild the middle classes.” Where have we heard those Keynesian promises before? Oh, yes, in 2009 — and look how well that worked.
Here’s a question that these Democrats should answer first. Why not have the Senate propose that budget? After all, their party controls the upper chamber, and it’s not as if they’re too busy budgeting at the moment to consider it. Right now, their party leadership in the Senate is focusing on NFL bounties rather than the proper management of federal funds, and it’s been almost three years since Harry Reid passed a proper budget. Oh, yes — it’s because their lunatic spending spree doesn’t have a prayer of passing, and would probably put more Republicans in the Senate in 2013, that’s why.
The winner from this session of Dueling Budgets will most likely be Paul Ryan. Americans want cuts, but still don’t want to see a drastic shift. Democrats tried to paint Ryan’s budget as radical and extreme, but with the RSC version on the table and the insane demand for three trillion dollars in government-intervention spending from Democrats, Ryan’s starting to look like the grown-up in the Beltway.
Addendum: Jim Pethokoukis analyzes the House Democrat proposal and discovers that it raises taxes by 40%:
Just what would President Barack Obama do in a second term if had maximum “flexibility”? Consider his first term: Even though Obama was elected along with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, he didn’t really get everything he wanted in 2009 and 2010. If he had, the stimulus would’ve been twice as big, healthcare reform would’ve included a public option, and a cap-and-trade scheme would right now be killing America’s natural gas revolution in the cradle.
So what about a second term? Well, a new budget proposal from liberal House Democrats suggests what Obama’s “dream agenda” might be. And if Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is the “Path to Prosperity,” the Congressional Progressive Caucus has offered the “Road to Ruin.”
Officially, the CPC calls the plan “The Budget for All” — and it’s all wrong. Sure, the proposal would theoretically cut the deficit from $1.1 trillion (7.0% of GDP) in 2012 to $180 billion (or 0.7% of GDP) in 2022. But the CPC would accomplish this feat entirely through massive and economy-crippling tax increases.
In 2012, the Congressional Budget Office projects Uncle Sam will spend 23.2% of GDP and take in 16.3% of GDP in tax revenue. In 2022, under the liberal CPC plan, spending would be 23.3% of GDP — a bit higher than the CBO forecast for 2012 — and revenue would be a sky-high 22.6% of GDP. In other words, spending would be 0.1 percentage point more and tax revenue would 6.3 points higher, or nearly 40%.
Maybe Medvedev can provide Obama with some “space” here, too.
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