Ryan Budget is Tough Medicine
By Bradley Blakeman
Newsmax.com
If you are smart, when you are sick, you go to a
doctor for diagnosis and treatment. Thereafter, you
follow doctor’s orders, take your medications, get
treatment and thereby get well.
On the other hand, if you are dumb and/or stubborn
and you feel ill you do not seek medical attention,
self diagnose and over medicate and thereby get more
sick — or even worse.
Today, our
economy is very sick. For years, it has been
ailing, however those in a position to cure it
decided to put off a diagnosis and treatment in the
hope that it would improve on its own.
Instead of prescribing the proper medication, they
administered what amounts to a placebo or just
ignored the symptoms all together. Eventually the
patient got so bad that now every American has
become infected.
With the patient fast approaching life threatening
economic disease, along comes a well renowned
economic specialist, Rep. Paul Ryan, who not only
offers the correct diagnosis, but also a cure.
If we take his medicine — some of which will be hard
to stomach — in the end it will prove the best
medicine and the patient will make a robust and full
recovery over time.
Here is some of what our fiscal doctor is
prescribing:
• Reduce federal spending by $6.2 trillion over 10
years
• Reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion
• Cut current income tax rates by a third from 35
percent to 25 percent
• Reduce $389 billion from Medicare over 10 years
• Budget $735 billion less for Medicaid over the
same 10-year period
• Trim discretionary spending over 10 years by $923
billion
Ryan does not recommend treatment for security,
defense or Social Security spending at current
levels other than to implore administrators to
eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.
There is no doubt that the ultimate cure for our
economy rests in the long-term overhaul and
treatment of our national entitlement programs,
i.e., Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
But Ryan’s current budget proposal is but one
treatment in a series of treatments that must be
administered over time to cure our economic health.
Partial treatment would only result in a relapse.
The root of our illness has been an addiction to
government spending.
Today America is spending 25.3 percent of its gross
domestic product, (GDP — total economic output of
the American economy — on government. Such high
government spending in relation to GDP is
unsustainable and amounts to the highest levels of
spending since World War II.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, (CBO)
is charged with analyzing, forecasting and reporting
on the effects of legislation and budgeting on the
economy. Projections of the CBO at current spending
levels will increase to 26 percent of GDP in 2022,
over 32 percent of GDP in 2030, 38 percent of GDP in
2040 and 45 percent of GDP by 2050 — with the vast
majority of government spending devoted to
healthcare.
Revenues are projected by the CBO to hover around 19
percent of GDP. You need not have medical degree to
realize that the gap between spending and revenues
are unsustainable and the patient will soon be on
life support with no hope of recovery if left
untreated.
Ryan looked at all factors surrounding the current
state of our economic illness and came to the
conclusion that the patient will die in 2037 unless
radical and massive treatments are taken
immediately.
Under the Ryan regimen, spending would go back to
the sustainable level of 20 percent of GDP through
2030 and level out at 19 percent of GDP by 2040.
These spending levels would allow for the national
debt to be reduced over time through increased and
sustained revenue.
Now is the time for America to listen to the
experts, take the tough medicine — and get well. No
longer can we afford to ignore our economic
symptoms.
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy
assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04.
He is currently a professor of Politics and Public
Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent
contributor to Fox News Opinion. Read more reports
from Bradley Blakeman —
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