But because Ryan and other Republicans reject higher taxes in any form, that path would require significant reductions in a host of popular federal programs.
Ryan calls for turning over to the states responsibility for the major federal programs for the poor, including Medicaid and food stamps, and giving recipients a deadline to find work and get off the government dole — much as welfare reform did to cash benefits in the late 1990s.
Federal education and job training programs would be consolidated and “modernized,” the plan says. And spending on Pell grants for college students would be reduced and retargeted toward low-income students most in need of assistance.
All told, Ryan proposes to slash federal spending by $5.3 trillion over the next decade compared with President Obama’s latest budget blueprint, with the biggest savings taken from health programs — including the repeal of Obama’s initiative to expand health coverage to the uninsured — and entitlements for the poor.
But it might not be enough for many tea party conservatives, who are demanding that Republicans balance the budget within the next 10 years. In an op-ed published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, Ryan argued that the plan offers “real spending discipline.”
Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were not satisfied with the cuts in the Ryan budget, Ed O’Keefe reported in 2Chambers :
Presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) termed the effort “very disappointing,” in a Tuesday statement. And he’s now been joined by fellow GOP candidate Rick Santorum, who told Glenn Beck later Tuesday that he believed Ryan’s spending plan is a “great blueprint” but he believes “we need to cut government spending faster” than the $5.3 trillion Ryan has proposed slashing over the next decade.
Santorum’s own plan calls for $5 trillion in cuts over five years. And he has said he believes Ryan would not move quickly enough on Medicare reform.
And the conservative Club for Growth had this to say, Helderman reports:
The group’s president said in a statement that Ryan’s plan does not put the country on a path to chop deficits quickly enough.
Chris Chocola also complained that that the budget largely waives massive cuts that are set to go into effect in January as a consequence for the failure of Congress’s special deficit reduction “supercommittee.”
According to the Budget Control Act — the hard-fought law that raised the nation’s debt ceiling over the summer -- failure of the supercommittee was to trigger about $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade, split between military and domestic spending.
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