Good for Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for releasing a bold budget plan to reduce (but not eliminate) deficits over the next decade. Unlike the current budget stalemate, Ryan’s plan focuses on the real budget busters: entitlements. Ryan proposes converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into state block grants. Starting in 2022, he wants to convert Medicare to a “premium support” program in which participants would choose from private insurance plans. Though the budget blueprint doesn’t address Social Security, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary that he wants to build upon the Social Security reforms recommended by President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, which include raising the retirement age.
At least part of the federal government will shut down unless Congress extends funding by midnight Friday. Though shutdowns have been rare in recent years, there were six shutdowns between fiscal years 1977 and 1980, and an additional nine occurred between fiscal years 1981 and 1996, the Washington Post reported. The longest shutdown in modern history was the most recent one, which began in mid-December 1995 and lasted 21 days. Failing to pass the budget by the Sept. 30 deadline is not rare. In fact, it has become the norm. The Washington Post reported: “In the past 16 years — 10 of which were controlled by Republicans, four by Democrats and two with mixed leadership in the chambers — Congress did not meet its statutory deadline for approving the spending bills.”
Politicians are struggling to find ways to significantly reduce the deficit, but Washington Post economics writer Ezra Klein noted that there’s a way to cut the deficit nearly in half without doing anything: Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire in 2012. Doing so would drop the projected 2021 deficit as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product from 6.1 to 3.6 percent.
Good for Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for releasing a bold budget plan to reduce (but not eliminate) deficits over the next decade. Unlike the current budget stalemate, Ryan’s plan focuses on the real budget busters: entitlements. Ryan proposes converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into state block grants. Starting in 2022, he wants to convert Medicare to a “premium support” program in which participants would choose from private insurance plans. Though the budget blueprint doesn’t address Social Security, Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary that he wants to build upon the Social Security reforms recommended by President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, which include raising the retirement age.
