Two Economic Futures For America: One Sustainable And One Unsustainable

The new GOP budget is bold, courageous, and it shows real adult leadership that pulls this country back from the brink. This two paragraph excerpt from Paul Ryan’s Wall Street Journal piece on his budget really shows you the difference between the Republican and Democrat approach in the starkest of terms.

The president’s recent budget proposal would accelerate America’s descent into a debt crisis. It doubles debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by 2021. It imposes $1.5 trillion in new taxes, with spending that never falls below 23% of the economy. His budget permanently enlarges the size of government. It offers no reforms to save government health and retirement programs, and no leadership.

Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.

One budget slams the country’s economy into an iceberg and takes it down to the bottom of the ocean. The GOP’s plan starts turning the ship.

There are three different ways the Democrats could deal with this.

1) They could agree and sign on.

2) They could say it’s going in the right general direction, but they want to haggle over the details.

3) They could demagogue the plan, claim that Republicans hate babies and old people, and hope that the voters reward them for putting a shotgun in the mouth of the American dream and pulling the trigger rather than doing the hard, thankless work of cutting spending.

Bet heavy on #3.

Share this!

Enjoy reading? Share it with your friends!