GOP 2012 Proposed Budget

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is THE MAN! Headlines: GOP 2012 budget to make $4 trillion-plus in cuts.

OK, OK,...we know it's not enough in cuts, but nobody else is stepping forward, particularly that idiot Harry Reid (D-NV).

Article by Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press 2 April 2011

WASHINGTON – A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president's debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

The spending blueprint from Rep. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is to be released Tuesday. It deals with the budget year that begins Oct. 1, not the current one that is the subject of negotiations aimed at preventing a partial government shutdown on Friday.

In an interview with "Fox News Sunday," Ryan said budget writers are working out the 2012 numbers with the Congressional Budget Office, but he said the overall spending reductions would come to "a lot more" than $4 trillion. The debt commission appointed by President Barack Obama recommended a plan that it said would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction.

Ryan said Obama's call for freezing nondefense discretionary spending actually locks in spending at high levels. Under the forthcoming GOP plan, Ryan said spending would return to 2008 levels and thus cut an additional $400 billion over 10 years.

Speaking broadly about the proposal, Ryan said it would include:

A "premium support system" for Medicare. In the future, older people would choose plans in the marketplace and the government would subsidize those plans. Ryan said that would differ from the voucher system he has proposed in the past. Those 55 and older would remain under the present Medicare system.

Ryan acknowledged that the "premium support system" would shift more costs to Medicare recipients, especially what he called "wealthy seniors." He did not define at what level someone would be considered wealthy.

Block grants to states for Medicaid, the health program for the poor. Ryan disputed reports that the plan would seek savings of $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid, but would say only that the details would be in the plan.

"Medicare and Medicaid spending will go up every single year under our budget. They don't just go up as much as they're going right now," he said. Ryan said governors have told members of Congress they want "the freedom to customize our Medicaid programs. ... We want to get governors freedom to do that."

A statutory cap on actual discretionary spending as a percentage of the economy. While Ryan did not specify the amount during the interview, he said it would be at a lower level than proposed by Obama and would return the government to its "historic size."

Pro-growth tax changes, including lower tax rates and broadening the tax base. Ryan said overhauling taxes would boost the economy. The plan will not propose tax increases.

Ryan was a member of the bipartisan debt commission but voted against its final recommendations, saying they failed to reduce spending on health care. The commission also endorsed tax increases along with painful spending cuts as necessary to dealing with the debt problem.

"We're not going to go down the path of raising taxes on people and raising taxes on the economy. We want to go after the source of the problem, and that is spending," Ryan said Sunday.

Ryan didn't mention how the budget plan would address Social Security.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia was skeptical that Ryan's proposal could achieve its targets without damaging social programs. He also questioned whether reductions in defense spending and seeking more revenue through tax reform would be part of the plan.

"I don't know how you get there without taking basically a meat ax to those programs who protect the most vulnerable in the country," Warner said on CNN's "State of the Union ."

"I'll give anybody the benefit of a doubt until I get a chance to look at the details," he said, "but I think the only way you're going to really get there is if you put all of these things, including defense spending, including tax reform, as part of the overall package."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., part of a six-member group of Republicans and Democrats forging their own budget proposal, said that the lawmakers would be looking for "real balance" in Ryan's plan and wanting all options considered.

"I think we'll come at it differently," Durbin said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "The idea of sparing the Pentagon from any savings, not imposing any new sacrifice on the wealthiest Americans, I think goes way too far. We have got to make certain that it's a balanced approach and one that can be sustained over the next 10 years."

Ryan criticized Obama, telling Fox that the president was "punting on the budget and not doing a thing to prevent a debt crisis, which every single economist tells us is coming sooner rather than later in this country."

"You have to address the drivers of our debt," he said. "We need to engage with the American people on a fact-based budget, on stopping politicians from making empty promises to people and talk to the country about what is necessary to fix these problems."

Congressional Freshman Speak Up

In southeast Florida last week, first-term GOP Rep. Allen West, a tea party favorite, called for changes that some might consider radical: abolish the Internal Revenue Service and federal income tax; retain tax cuts for billionaires so they won't shut down their charities; stop extending unemployment benefits that "reward bad behavior" by discouraging people from seeking new jobs.

As for entitlements, West told a friendly town hall gathering in Coral Springs, if Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid "are left on autopilot, if we don't institute some type of reform, they'll subsume our entire GDP" by 2040 or 2050. GDP, or gross domestic product, measures the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.

Social Security, the largest federal program, mainly benefits retirees. Medicare provides health coverage for older people. Medicaid helps those with low incomes. Combined, the three consume about 40 percent of the budget. Their costs are growing rapidly. Social Security and Medicare benefits now exceed the payroll taxes that fund them.

West, who's likely to draw serious Democratic opposition next year, showed scant interest in edging toward the center on anything. He didn't take issue with the man who said congressional Democrats "have joined with the radical Islamists," or with the woman who said President Barack Obama "certainly doesn't support Israel."

In Greenville, S.C., a different Republican freshman with tea party ties, Rep. Trey Gowdy, also suggested during last week's congressional break a paring back of social programs.

According to a Greenville News account posted on his website, Gowdy "described a recent school classroom where most children indicated they think it's the government's job to provide health care, Social Security and education. 'We've got to do something about the sense of entitlement,' Gowdy said."

Gowdy's office later said he thinks Social Security "is a key aspect of a broad effort to fundamentally reform our entitlement system, but any solution must honor our commitment to current retirees."

Indeed, West and many other Republicans say current and soon-to-be retirees should see no benefit cuts. Their calls for changing Medicare and Social Security often lack specifics, and it's unclear whether the divided Congress will tackle the programs' long-term problems or postpone action, as has happened many times before on Capitol Hill.

West's desire to slash spending seems to stop at his district's doorstep. The Coral Springs audience cheered loudly when he said he helped secure a $21 million grant for a new runway at the nearby Fort Lauderdale airport.

"Grant money is not pork," West said. He issued a press release saying the runway project "will generate at least 11,000 jobs" by 2014 and cost $791 million.

"No one is going to be hurt by it," said Steve Stevens, 80, a retired real estate developer. If people, rich or poor, count on Social Security to fund their retirement, he said, "it's very poor planning."

Obama's debt commission has recommended gradually increasing the full retirement age, from 67 to 69, over the next 65 years.

Cynthia Steele, 51, said anyone making more than $100,000 a year should not receive Social Security benefits, even if it affected her and her friends.

In Washington, Democrats are conflicted. Thirty-two Senate Democrats joined 32 Republicans in urging Obama to negotiate a broad-based spending plan that includes changes to Social Security and Medicare.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says he opposes cuts in Social Security benefits.

The centrist Democratic group Third Way says the public is ready to embrace gradual changes to entitlement programs and that Republicans are winning the issue so far.

"We don't believe Republicans 'going too far' will be their Waterloo," the group said in a memo. "The party seen as most serious on the issue will win the day."

If Republicans and Democrats cannot agree soon on spending plans for this year and next, the government could face its first partial shutdown since 1996. That prospect worries leaders of both parties, and they are watching to see if last week's recess hardened of softened lawmakers' positions.

West suggested there is room for compromise, but not much.

"I'm not for shutting down the government," he told the Coral Springs crowd. But he said Obama must lead the budget negotiations, or else.

If there is a shutdown, West said, "it's going to be because the president is not engaged."

Murderous Afghan rioters and that Idiot Terry Jones

Headline from an hour ago: Afghan riots over Quran-burning, 2 days and 20 dead

I'm sure most of you have heard or read about the Koran burning by Florida Pastor Terry "I'm an Idiot Butt Clown" Jones, which is what kicked off the recent rioting in Kabul, but here is the news summary by Patrick Quinn, Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghans rioted for a second day Saturday to protest the burning of a Quran in Florida, killing nine people in Kandahar and injuring more than 80 in a wave of violence that underscored rising anti-foreign sentiment after nearly a decade of war.

The desecration at a small U.S. church has outraged Muslims worldwide, and in Afghanistan it further strained ties with the West. On Friday, 11 people were killed, including seven foreign U.N. employees, in a protest in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The protests come at a critical juncture as the U.S.-led coalition gears up for an insurgent spring offensive and a summer withdrawal of some troops, and with Afghanistan's mercurial president increasingly questioning international motives and NATO's military strategy.

Two suicide attackers disguised as women blew themselves up and a third was gunned down Saturday when they used force to try to enter a NATO base on the outskirts of Kabul, NATO and Afghan police said. Earlier in the week, six U.S. soldiers died during an operation against insurgents in eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan, where the Taliban retain safe havens.

President Hamid Karzai expressed regret for the 20 protest deaths, but he also further stoked possible anti-foreign sentiment by again demanding that the United States and United Nations bring to justice the pastor of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, where the Quran was burned March 20. Many Afghans did not know about the Quran-burning until Karzai condemned it four days after it happened.

An evangelical pastor whose church burned a Koran last month said he was "devastated" but did not feel responsible for the killings Friday of seven UN workers in a violent protest in Afghanistan.

"We are devastated by that information, that news," Terry Jones, the head of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, told AFP. "We don't feel responsible for that."

The United Nations said four Nepalese guards, three foreign UN workers, and several protesters were killed when a mob enraged by the Koran burning attacked the UN compound in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Jones presided over the burning of the Islamic holy book March 20 at his Florida church, an act he had long threatened despite warnings it would put American troops and others in Afghanistan in danger.

Cowboy's comment:To be sure, the radical, anti-West Islamist are responsible for their murderous actions, however I also hold Terry Jones somewhat responsible. I think Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center is an IDIOT for doing just what the radical Muslims have been doing to everyone else. Stooping to their level and burning their Holy Book is NOT an example that true Christians should set and was a STUPID thing to do, endangering our service memebers who have a hard enough job staying alive as it is. This was after DoD officials asked him not to go through with the Koran burning. Terry Jones is certainly the Idiot of the Day,..maybe of the Week for that matter.....that is until Braney "Mumbles" Frank gets in front of another camera.

Alot of my friends may disagree and not hold Jones responsible at all,....that's fine. After all, the radical Muslims cannot justify their actions. BUT the Koran burning will be broadcast all over the world as an example of U.S. intolerance.

And, what the hell kind of a namem for a church is the "World Dove Outreach Center",....burning the Koran is not outreach at all, and the Dove is a nasty bird anyway.