Congress is currently embroiled in a funding fight over how much to spend on less than one-fifth of the federal budget for the next six months. Whether we cut $33 billion or $61 billion—that is, whether we shave 2% or 4% off of this year's deficit—is important. It's a sign that the election did in fact change the debate in Washington from how much we should spend to how much spending we should cut.
But this morning the new House Republican majority will introduce a budget that moves the debate from billions in spending cuts to trillions. America is facing a defining moment. The threat posed by our monumental debt will damage our country in profound ways, unless we act.
No one person or party is responsible for the looming crisis. Yet the facts are clear: Since President Obama took office, our problems have gotten worse. Major spending increases have failed to deliver promised jobs. The safety net for the poor is coming apart at the seams. Government health and retirement programs are growing at unsustainable rates. The new health-care law is a fiscal train wreck. And a complex, inefficient tax code is holding back American families and businesses.
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.
...Here are its major components:
• Reducing spending: This budget proposes to bring spending on domestic government agencies to below 2008 levels, and it freezes this category of spending for five years. The savings proposals are numerous, and include reforming agricultural subsidies, shrinking the federal work force through a sensible attrition policy, and accepting Defense Secretary Robert Gates's plan to target inefficiencies at the Pentagon.
• Welfare reform: This budget will build upon the historic welfare reforms of the late 1990s by converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that lets states create a range of options and gives Medicaid patients access to better care. It proposes similar reforms to the food-stamp program, ending the flawed incentive structure that rewards states for adding to the rolls. Finally, this budget recognizes that the best welfare program is one that ends with a job—it consolidates dozens of duplicative job-training programs into more accessible, accountable career scholarships that will better serve people looking for work.
As we strengthen and improve welfare programs for those who need them, we eliminate welfare for those who don't. Our budget targets corporate welfare, starting by ending the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that is costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. It gets rid of the permanent Wall Street bailout authority that Congress created last year. And it rolls back expensive handouts for uncompetitive sources of energy, calling instead for a free and open marketplace for energy development, innovation and exploration.
• Health and retirement security: This budget's reforms will protect health and retirement security. This starts with saving Medicare. The open-ended, blank-check nature of the Medicare subsidy threatens the solvency of this critical program and creates inexcusable levels of waste. This budget takes action where others have ducked. But because government should not force people to reorganize their lives, its reforms will not affect those in or near retirement in any way.
Starting in 2022, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose a plan that works best for them from a list of guaranteed coverage options. This is not a voucher program but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.
In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance for lower- income beneficiaries and those with greater health risks. Reform that empowers individuals—with more help for the poor and the sick—will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health security for America's seniors.
We must also reform Social Security to prevent severe cuts to future benefits. This budget forces policy makers to work together to enact common-sense reforms. The goal of this proposal is to save Social Security for current retirees and strengthen it for future generations by building upon ideas offered by the president's bipartisan fiscal commission.
• Budget enforcement: This budget recognizes that it is not enough to change how much government spends. We must also change how government spends. It proposes budget-process reforms—including real, enforceable caps on spending—to make sure government spends and taxes only as much as it needs to fulfill its constitutionally prescribed roles.
• Tax reform: This budget would focus on growth by reforming the nation's outdated tax code, consolidating brackets, lowering tax rates, and assuming top individual and corporate rates of 25%. It maintains a revenue-neutral approach by clearing out a burdensome tangle of deductions and loopholes that distort economic activity and leave some corporations paying no income taxes at all.
Anyone who thinks there isn't a significant difference between the Republicans and the Democrats isn't paying attention.
Ryan concludes on a very positive, hopeful note. In that sense, he reminds me of Ronald Reagan.
This is America's moment to advance a plan for prosperity. Our budget offers the nation a model of government that is guided by the timeless principles of the American idea: free-market democracy, open competition, a robust private sector bound by rules of honesty and fairness, a secure safety net, and equal opportunity for all under a limited constitutional government of popular consent.
We can reform government so that people don't have to reorient their lives for less. We can grow our economy, promote opportunity, and encourage upward mobility. This budget is the new House majority's answer to history's call. It is now up to all of us to keep America exceptional.
The difference between Ryan's words and Obama's "Are you in?" couldn't be more dramatic.
Here's a real plan for real change to provide real hope for America's future.
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: So is the press starting to sour on the stalemate in Libya?
Joining us now here in Washington, Roger Simon, chief political columnist for Politico; Dana Milbank, columnist for "The Washington Post," and in San Francisco, Debra Saunders, a columnist for "The San Francisco Chronicle."
Roger Simon, are the journalists and the anchors we just saw now aggressively challenging and acting openly skeptical about the Obama policy in Libya?
ROGER SIMON, CHIEF POLITICAL COLUMNIST, POLITICO: Yes, and that's a good thing. We're supposed to be openly skeptical.
The bloom isn't entirely off the rose between Obama and the press, but reporters are starting to concentrate more than ever on what he says rather than how he says it. We will stipulate that he's the greatest orator of modern times, but now we're looking beyond that in every speech for what he's actually telling us.
Obama is the greatest orator of modern times?
That is laughable.
How does Simon define "modern times"? The 21st century?
It's nuts to consider Obama the greatest orator of modern times.
What's more pathetic is Simon's admission that reporters have been so dazzled by Obama that they haven't been scrutinizing the content of what he says.
The crush the press has had on Obama is an embarrassment. Are these professional journalists, or are they groupies?
They never should have been swooning. They should have been serving as reporters. Truly embarrassing.
Some examples of Obama's oratory "greatness":
The "Breathalzyer"
The "Corpse-man"
The "Twitters"
The "Uh"
The "E-pants-ipation"
"E-pants-pation" still makes me laugh.
No matter what Simon says, the fact is Obama is NOT the greatest orator of modern times. He pales in comparison to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or President Ronald Reagan. I think even Jesse Jackson is better than Obama.
Without a teleprompter, the man is lost. With his teleprompter, he struggles. He doesn't connect with his audience. He simply reads, sometimes with disastrous results.
When it comes to content, Obama really falls apart.
Jay Leno continues to bombard his audience with political drivel from Leftists.
The latest Leftist to appear on the Tonight Show was Fareed Zakaria.
Naturally, Zakaria carried water for Obama. He kept yapping about Libya and the "smart diplomacy" of the Obama administration.
Yes, it's been absolutely brilliant.
Right.
As usual, Leno didn't challenge the Leftist Zakaria at all.
Leno really has changed. Since his prime time fiasco, he doesn't hesitate to reveal his personal political leanings.
He rarely books conservatives on the show, so any political discussion is incredibly slanted and annoying. There's no balance. Leno rarely plays devil's advocate. It's a liberal echo chamber.
Here's video, followed by some interview transcript:
FAREED ZAKARIA: I think Obama's weakness is he's a very smart guy but he's very cool, which is good. You're calm, you're collected, but there's almost too much cool. There's an unsentimental...
LENO: Unemotional.
ZAKARIA: Yeah, you think about the problem of Americans who are unemployed. You talk about 20 million, maybe 25 million Americans -- I think if there was some way that he could connect with them. I think they understand he can't wave a magic wand and do something about it, but he needs to in some way give voice to their feeling of hopelessness and frustration. He's not as good at that as he is at the pure analysis.
Oh, good grief.
That's all Zakaria could up with when it comes to Obama's weakness?
Obama's weakness is a lesser strength?
What a hack!
When Leno brought up the 2012 election and the Republican nominee, Zakaria stressed the Tea Party's influence, suggesting extremism. That's right out of the Dems' talking points and Chuck Schumer's big mouth.
ZAKARIA: The party has changed a lot. This is not Ronald Reagan's party. This is not Richard Nixon's party. This is a party animated by the Tea Party, by populism, by all these new forces. And so I think it's much less going to play by the old rules. And so when people look at a Sarah Palin and say, 'Well, she can't get it,' she energizes that base like nobody else does.
Then Leno set up Zakaria to take some shots at Glenn Beck.
LENO: Let me ask you something just to have some fun here. Glenn Beck -- what did he call you? An 'America-basher' and a 'useful idiot.'
ZAKARIA: Yeah, because I corrected his math. He went on a show with his chalkboard and, you know, explained how 10 percent of Muslims are all, are terrorists.
LENO: 9.8. Ten percent!
ZAKARIA: Ten percent, you know. And I just pointed out if you do the math that means there are 157 million terrorists around in the world, and by the State Department's counts there have been only, what, 10,000... you know, 1000 terrorist events. If you assume 100 people involved in planning, it's just the math doesn't make any sense.
So I just think, look, it's the easiest thing to call somebody when you disagree with them an America-basher. I'm an immigrant. I'm not an American by accident of birth as Glenn Beck is. I'm an American by choice. I came to this country.
LENO: (Laughs, applauds)
I can understand why Zakaria would want to respond to Beck's name-calling, and defend himself. That's fair.
However, Zakaria's remarks do serve to diminish those of us blessed to be born in America, as if he has some greater authority because he chose to be an American.
I don't like that argument.
I don't think of myself as "American by accident of birth." I'm just a proud citizen, grateful to be an American. My pride and gratitude are no accident.
Also, Zakaria derides Beck for calling him an "America-basher."
Will Zakaria condemn the protesters in Wisconsin and their comrades around the country for calling Governor Scott Walker Hitler and other hideous names?
Next topic: The Birther controversy.
LENO: You know I like Donald Trump. He's a friend of mine. He's been here. Why... You can't be president if you weren't born here. If it didn't come out before the election, what is this nonsense? Why does this keep going on?
ZAKARIA: Look, I think that some of this -- maybe there are people who feel genuinely worried about this -- I think some of it is being used by politicans as a coded way to talk about race and the fact that he's different from us, whatever that means. I think it's a great shame because first of all, it's unbecoming, it's un-American. Secondly, you know, look at this last census. What does it mean to be different for us? You've got 15 million Hispanic Americans. You've got a country that is increasingly a mixture of minorities. You know, look at us. We all have funny last names. Right? I mean, join the club.
And there's the race card.
I think Trump just wants publicity. He's shrewd. He's knows how to get it. Call Rosie O'Donnell a fat pig and question Obama's birth certificate, whatever it takes to get attention. It's about self-promotion. But that's not the issue. Zakaria is especially offensive when he calls Americans racists and bigots.
This code crap is silly. It's insulting to the majority of Americans who have policy disagreements with Obama and don't approve of the job he's doing as president.
While I'm sure there are some people against Obama because he's half black, most of us against Obama are critical of his policies and values, not his skin color.
This is the 21st century.
Another Leftist hijacks Leno's show. I blame Leno for handing over the controls.
