Rick Perry Favored By Republicans And Tea Party Supporters

Gallup's new numbers are out and Rick Perry seems to at the front of the pack still, among Republicans who identify "government spending and power" as the set of issues most important to them as well as a smaller lead against Romney among Republicans who say "business and the economy" is their top issue.



Findings also show that Perry is more popular among Tea Party supporters than any other candidate as well.

Rick Perry's candidacy has attracted strong initial support from Republicans who identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement. Perry leads by 21 percentage points over the closest contenders among this group, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. Among Republicans who say they do not support the Tea Party movement, Romney and Perry are essentially tied.



These results are based on an Aug. 17-21 Gallup poll, which showed Perry overtaking Romney as the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination among all Republicans nationwide.



The poll finds that 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, with 36% saying they do not consider themselves supporters. Included among the group of Tea Party supporters is a smaller group -- representing 12% of Republicans -- who say they are "strong" supporters of the movement. Among this smaller group, Perry's lead is even greater, 46% to 16%, over Bachmann, with all other candidates in single digits.



In Gallup's July measurement of Republicans' nomination preferences, before Perry officially entered the race, Romney held a slight edge over Bachmann among Tea Party supporters, 29% to 23%. Romney led Paul by 25% to 16% among nonsupporters.

The breakdown is explained over at Gallup on the lead Perry holds over Romney on the Government spending and business and economy issues, but there is no doubt that 3 weeks into his official campaign, Perry has slid into the candidate of choice for many.



NRO explains why Perry is popular with those that recognize his name already and why he will become more popular as more match him up against Romney and others.

• As “America’s jobs governor,” Perry is a one-man antidote to Obama’s venomous policies, which have held unemployment above 9 percent for 25 of the last 27 months. Across all 50 states, between June 2009 and June 2011, the Dallas Federal Reserve calculates that 49.9 percent of America’s net new jobs arose in Texas. July was its eleventh straight month of payroll expansion, with 29,300 Texans finding work. Nearly eleven years into Perry’s governorship, Texas inarguably is No. 1 in job growth.

During Romney’s single four-year term, however, the U.S. Labor Department ranked Massachusetts No. 47 in job growth. Employment increased just 0.9 percent between January 2003 and January 2007. At that time, U.S. job growth was roughly 5 percent, reports WSJ.com’s Brett Arends. Romney did keep Massachusetts ahead of Ohio and Michigan — two Rust Belt job sieves — and Louisiana, crushed by Katrina.

Read the whole thing.



Job growth and the economy are going to be two of the most important issues for the 2012 GOP nomination and for the 2012 presidential election and Perry stands far above all other GOP candidates as well as above Barack Obama on records alone.



Unless unemployment is drastically reduced and/or the economy grows at an impossible rate over the next year, Obama has nothing to campaign on except his speeches which are nothing like those he charmed voters with in 2008, because now there is a record behind him and it is ugly.



Obama's signature issue, Obamacare is still opposed by the majority of Americans and his unprecedented spending spending spree and deficit increases in the last two and half years have failed to stimulate the economy or produce the job growth promised with unemployment still over 9.0 percent.



No doubt as more Americans, especially Independents, learn more and are able to compare Perry's record with everyone else in the field of candidates and Obama, Perry's national lead will increase.



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Democrats And Obama' s Specific Spending Excesses

The first headline I saw this morning was from CBS News titled "National debt has increased $4 trillion under Obama."

The latest posting by the Treasury Department shows the national debt has now increased $4 trillion on President Obama's watch.



The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion.



It's the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president.



The national debt increased $4.9 trillion during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. The debt now is rising at a pace to surpass that amount during Mr. Obama's four-year term.

The very next headline I saw was "Spending, not entitlements, created huge deficit" from Byron York at Campaign 2012 who breaks down the 2011 projected deficit, separating the expenses associated with the economic downturn from the specific spending excesses of Obama and the Democrats, showing that half the projected deficit is a "down payment on the Obama domestic agenda."



York starts by showing the stark contrast from 2007 to 2011:

There's no doubt federal spending has exploded in recent years. In fiscal 2007, the last year before things went haywire, the government took in $2.568 trillion in revenues and spent $2.728 trillion, for a deficit of $160 billion. In 2011, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the government will take in $2.230 trillion and spend $3.629 trillion, for a deficit of $1.399 trillion.

He goes on to explain how we went from a $160 billion deficit in 2007 to the nearly $1.4 trillion projected for 2011.

But how, precisely, did that happen? Was there a steep rise in entitlement spending? Did everyone suddenly turn 65 and begin collecting Social Security and using Medicare? No: The deficits are largely the result not of entitlements but of an explosion in spending related to the economic downturn and the rise of Democrats to power in Washington. While entitlements must be controlled in the long run, Washington's current spending problem lies elsewhere.

York fairly shows that half of those figures can be directly related to the economic downturn and posits that certain spending would have had to be done whether it was a Democrat or a Republicans in control of the White House.



Then he shows the other half of the problem, and that lies directly at Obama's feet.

That's a deficit increase that would have happened in an economic crisis whether Republicans or Democrats controlled Washington. But it was the specific spending excesses of President Obama and the Democrats that shot the deficit into the stratosphere.



There is no line in the federal budget that says "stimulus," but Obama's massive $814 billion stimulus increased spending in virtually every part of the federal government. "It's spread all through the budget," says former Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin. "It was essentially a down payment on the Obama domestic agenda." Green jobs, infrastructure, health information technology, aid to states -- it's all in there, billions in increased spending.



As for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP -- it has no specific line in the budget, either, but that is because it was anticipated to pay nearly all of its own cost, which it has.



Spending for Social Security and Medicare did go up in this period -- $162 billion and $119 billion, respectively -- but by incremental and predictable amounts that weren't big problems in previous years. "We're getting older one year at a time, and health care costs grow at 7 or 8 percent a year," says Holtz-Eakin. If Social Security and Medicare were the sole source of the current deficit, it would be a lot smaller than it is.



The bottom line is that with baby boomers aging, entitlements will one day be a major budget problem. But today's deficit crisis is not one of entitlements. It was created by out-of-control spending on everything other than entitlements. The recent debt-ceiling agreement is supposed to put the brakes on that kind of spending, but leaders have so far been maddeningly vague on how they'll do it.

Read the entire piece for actual dollar amounts.



The issues above along with job creation and growth are going to be central to the 2012 elections, presidential and senatorial, and are issues that need to be hammered home, relentlessly.



Obama inherited a troublesome economy but under his hand, his guidance, and his first two years a House and Senate completely controlled by Democrats, that economy spiraled downward in a free fall and Obama would tell you it is simply "bad luck."



American voters should keep an old expression in their minds over the next 15 months:



"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."



Then in November 2012, they should vote accordingly.



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Majority NABE Economists Believe Spending Cuts Are The Solution To Deficit Problem

CNBC:

The majority of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics believe that the federal deficit should be reduced only or primarily through spending cuts.



The survey out Monday found that 56 percent of the NABE members surveyed felt that way, while 37 percent said they favor equal parts spending cuts and tax increases. The remaining 7 percent believe it should be done only or mostly through tax increases.

Read it all and pass it along because you can be assured that Liberals and the majority of media won't be highlighting it for their readers.



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Gallup- 55% to 35%, Majority More Concerned About Lack Of Spending Cuts In Debt Battle

Gallup shows Americans want some type of compromise in the debt ceiling battle but lower into the Gallup poll it shows that by a 20 point margin, 55 percent to 35 percent, the majority "say they worry more that the government would raise the debt ceiling without plans for major spending cuts, than that the government would not raise the ceiling and an economic crisis would ensue."

The question: Which concerns you more: The government would not raise the debt ceiling and a major economic crisis would result, or the government would raise the debt ceiling but without plans for major cuts in future spending?

55 percent of respondents are more concerned about the lack of spending cuts than about any crisis that would result in no debt limit increase.

Bottom Line

Americans would like their representatives in Washington to compromise and get a debt agreement in place before the Aug. 2 deadline, but at the same time are concerned that any such agreement include major spending cuts.

Now, answer it out loud folks.. which party is fighting very publicly for spending cuts and which party is fighting against making those cuts?

Obama Wants Everyone To Share the Sacrifice... Except For Him

We have been hearing quite a bit from Democrats and Barack Obama about "shared sacrifice", yet when it comes to spending cuts to the Executive Office of the President (EOP), cuts roughly in line with the cuts to other departments in various House spending bills that have been taken up so far, Barack Obama balks.

Proposed House cuts to the Executive Office of the President's (EOP) budget will hurt administration efforts to cut the deficit, the White House argues.

The Obama administration made the argument in comments on H.R. 2434, the 2012 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. That bill could be on the House floor as early as next week, and would decrease funding for the EOP from $705 million to $640 million.

Seems everyone but Obama should have to sacrifice.

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Tom Coburn To Release $9 Trillion Deficit Reduction Proposal

Oklahoma Republican, Senator Tom Coburn will hold a press conference scheduled for 2:30pm, today, in the Senate where he will reveal details of his new proposal which would reduce the deficit by $9 trillion using methods such as adjusting the tax code and lowering it and spending cuts in a variety of places.

No doubt there will be much that both party loyalists will like and dislike and it is doubtful the proposal will garner the votes from either party needed for it to pass through the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The Ryan budget proposal, McConnell's fall back plan, and now Coburn's, does highlight one simple fact though.

Republicans, so far, are the only ones actually putting plans out there. They are offering up hard choices and going out on the limb to do so. Democrats continue to trash every plan Republicans offer up but they have refused to proposal any plans of their own.

Yet as American Thinker points out, the MSM has already started sounding their drums and fixed their coordinated messaging.

In case you haven't noticed, the drumbeat has begun in earnest to blame Republicans for the failure of talks on the debt limit and any bad reaction to it from the markets.

Today's hysteria is being generated because the GOP wants to include the unreasonable, the radical, the extreme notion that the government - eventually - should have to live within its means.

The Democrat-controlled US Senate hasn't even proposed a budget in 810 days.

It should be noted though that Barack Obama did offer one plan, a $3.7 trillion budget plan which the senate rejected to take up with a vote of 97 to 0. Not even one Democrat was willing to vote for Obama's plan.

Some people think Obama offered up another plan which would lower the deficit by $4 trillion but while Obama did mention that number to the media, he never produced any proposal, bill or details, it was only a soundbite in a speech.


Related:

Discussions to raise the debt ceiling continue as the August 2, 2011 deadline to do so looms closer and closer.

Keith Hennessey has a decent breakdown of where things stand up to this point.


Cartoon at the top by Gary Varvel, via Townhall.

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Obama Still Hitting New Polling 'Lows' On Economy

According to the latest McClatchy-Marist poll, despite 50 percent of voters having a favorable impression of Obama with 44 percent having an unfavorable impression, and a majority believing Obama inherited the problems, 58 percent of voters disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy with only 37 percent of voters approving.

So, voters like Obama personally, they understand he inherited the problem but they are unhappy with how he has handled the problem.

Breakdown:

Independents- 60 percent disapprove of Obama on economy
Republicans- 91 percent disapprove of Obama on economy
Democrats- 31 percent of Democrats disapprove of Obama on economy

Other findings show that more disapprove of the job Obama is doing (47%) than approve (45%) and 61 percent of the voters disapprove of how Obama is handling the budget deficit.


Related: Dems Have No Plan For Jobs, Concerns of Middle-Class Families

Much of this discontent stems from Washington Democrats’ reliance on failed ‘stimulus’ policies over responsible, long-term solutions to address the key cost-of-living issues facing families and small businesses:

	Democrats who run Washington	Republicans
High gas prices	No plan.	Republicans’ American Energy Initiative is focused on stopping government policies that drive up energy prices and removing barriers to job-creating energy production.
Skyrocketing health care costs	No plan.	Republicans have voted to repeal the job-crushing health care law, and are working to replace it with common-sense reforms to lower costs and protect jobs.
Cost of creating jobs	No plan.	Republicans’ Plan for America’s Job Creators builds on the Pledge to America with measures designed to get government out of the way so our economy can get back to creating jobs.
Cost of government	No plan.	Republicans’ Path to Prosperity budget pays down our debt over time and lays the foundation for long-term private-sector job growth.

Source Speaker.gov.

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Debt Limit Talks: Bush Era Rates Off Table And House Democrats Feel Ignored

After the bipartisan talks imploded last week when Democrats insisted that part of the deal include $400 billion in tax increases. This forced Barack Obama to finally come to the table in negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, which stands at $14.3 trillion now, to allow the U.S. to borrow more money.

There have been a flurry of meetings that now include Obama, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a separate meeting with House Speaker John Boehner and another meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), assistant to the leader.

The Hill reports that the administration has stopped insisting on ending the Bush-era tax cuts.

I am starting to get a vague sense of deja vu though as I see headlines like "House Democrats feel jilted by the president in budget, debt talks."

Just as House Democrats did in December after Republicans took a large net gain of House seats,the biggest turnover of seats in decades, to take control of the House of Representatives, House Democrats are now upset, feeling that they are being taken for granted and ignored and complaining publicly.

“How is it that the House Democrats played such an important role [in the majority], and all of a sudden [the White House says], ‘Forget it, we’ll work with the Senate and the Republican leadership?’ ” asked Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), vice chairman of the Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee.

House Democrats’ frustration with Obama is boiling in the intense heat of negotiations to reach a budget deal and raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

Capitol Hill Democrats have been steaming for months, since being sidelined during talks to extend the George W. Bush-era tax rates and fund the government this year. Many say the White House takes their support for granted but ignores them when it comes to making policy.

“Before this year we were playing a strong role,” said Cuellar, but “now a lot of us feel like we’re almost being ignored.”

Before this year they played a strong role because they had an overwhelming majority, and they had a Democratically controlled Senate and White House and were able to shove anything that they wanted through because the GOP could not stop them from railroading laws and bills.

November 2010 midterms ended that one party reign.

They are frustrated, speaking out to reporters, angry and aren't at the point where they can admit the reason they are being "ignored" treated as if they are "irrelevant" is because House Democrats are irrelevant at the moment.

Of course Obama is taking them for granted, who else are they going to support in 2012? The Republican candidate against Obama?

I don't think so.

Obama knows the answer to that question and so do the House Democrats that are throwing their temper tantrums.

The Obama administration needs the debt ceiling voted on, passed and raised by August 2, 2011.

Republicans have made it clear that for any debt ceiling raise to pass the House of Representatives, an equal amount of spending cuts be part of the deal. Want $2 trillion (example) then cut that same $2 trillion. Republicans want a balanced budget amendment to show they are serious about stopping the practice of spending more money than we have.

Republicans seem to have learned their lesson when they were thrown out of leadership positions the last time by their base for spending like drunken sailors with taxpayer money. They understand they campaigned in 2010 on the premise of cutting spending and lowering our deficit and if they do not fight to keep those promises, they can be replaced again in the next election.







Wasteful Government Spending

Gallup found that 73 percent of national adults understand what liberal Democrats and Barack Obama (yes, redundant) do not seem to be able to... that wasteful government spending is more to blame for the rising federal budget deficit than not raising enough money in taxes.


Corporate Taxes vs Budget Cuts

In May, a New York Times/CBS News poll (neither organization can be accused of a "conservative slant") shows that most Americans prefer budget cuts over raising corporate taxes.

In general, however, few Americans back increasing taxes on American businesses: only 37 percent said corporate taxes should be increased to help reduce the federal budget deficit. The rest agree with an alternative argument that increased taxes would discourage American companies from creating jobs and hurt them in the global marketplace. Thirty-two percent would rather see corporate taxes remain as they are now and 26 percent said taxes on corporate profits should be decreased.

Government Shutdown vs Spending Cuts

In April Rasmussen found that 57 percent of polled voters suggest that a government shutdown would be preferred to not doing the deep spending cuts necessary to get the federal budget on its way toward balance. Only 31 percent believe that avoiding a shutdown is more important.


The bottom line here is that this battle, like the previous budget battles since November is being aired publicly with the same public referred to in the polls above, watching as Republicans fight for spending cuts, a balanced budget amendment and Democrats fighting to raise taxes.

I can almost see all those public statements used in GOP campaign videos with Democrats and Obama stating over and over again "raise taxes" with the GOP candidate saying "cut spending."

Democrats need to stop playing to their 13 percent fiscally liberal base and start playing to Americans as a whole or even to the 38 percent that view themselves as moderate on fiscal issues, or 2012 is going make their massive losses in 2010 look like a walk in the park.

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CBO's Long Term Debt Projections Spell Major Economic Disaster

H/T YID With LID for pointing out (and providing the embedded report below his post) the latest Congressional Budget Office's long term debt report which projects unmanageable economic disaster on the horizon for the U.S. unless some painful changes are made now.

CBO’s projections in most of the report understate the severity of the long-term budget problem because they do not incorporate the negative effects that accumulating additional federal debt would have on the economy, nor do they include the impact of higher tax rates on people’s incentives to work and save. In particular, large budget deficits and growing debt would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment—which in turn would lower income growth in the United States. (Chapter 2 of the report presents estimates of the economic effects of growing debt and the impact of those economic changes on the trajectory of debt under both scenarios.)

There is much more, go read it there and the report itself is embedded for those that wish to look through the whole thing.


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International Monetary Fund Downgrades U.S. Forecast

Via Washington Examiner we see the International Monetary Fund has downgraded their 2011 and 2012 growth forecasts for the U.S.

The IMF now forecasts U.S. gross domestic product of 2.5 percent in 2011 and 2.7 percent in 2012, yet Obama's budget proposal anticipated growth of 2.7 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively. While that may not seem like a big deal, small fluctuations in GDP can make a huge difference on deficits because economic performance has an effect on both sides of the budget ledger. Greater growth means more revenue because more people are employed and earning higher incomes, but it also means less spending on so-called "automatic stabilizers" such as unemployment benefits.

Obama's growth compared to Reagan's:

Reagan recovery saw GDP surge by 4.5 percent and 7.2 percent in 1983 and 1984,and the Obama economy isn't going to achieve that in anybody's wildest dreams.

Here are a few differences between Obama's policies and Reagan's:

* Reagan cut income tax rates. Obama spent his first two years promising to increase tax rates on “the rich,” mostly small business owners and investors. In December he signed legislation that schedules his tax increase to take effect two months after the 2012 Presidential election

* Reagan cut “discretionary” spending. Obama dramatically increased it.

* Reagan reduced regulation and government intervention in the private sector.

* Obama has implemented waves of new regulation and under his leadership Congress passed legislation that will require new regulations of health insurance and virtually every detail of banking and finance – even ATM cards.

BTW, it has been a year since Obama's much lauded "Recovery Summer" as Speaker of the House John Boehner explains:

The “stimulus” was all about big spending and big government — not jobs. That was obvious on the day the “Recovery Summer” began in my home state of Ohio. Local construction workers on a nearby site in Columbus were forced to take the day off, without pay, so the White House entourage could roll through and tout all the taxpayer dollars they were spending. But all that spending got us was more debt and fewer jobs.

Approximately 1.5 million jobs have been lost since the “stimulus” was signed in 2009 — roughly 300,000 of them as administration officials hopped from town to town promoting the “summer of recovery.” The national unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in May — far above the 8 percent promised by the White House — and has averaged 9.5 percent throughout the Obama presidency.

The president can call this a “bump in the road,” or blame ATMs, or joke that those “shovel ready” jobs that were promised “weren’t as shovel ready as we expected.” But there’s nothing funny about policies that keep workers on the unemployment line and drive us deeper into debt. Those aren’t the kinds of results — and this isn’t the recovery — the American people deserve.

There has been no recovery. Obama and the Democrats who controlled the House and Senate at the time, poured almost a trillion dollars into the economy and slowed down the bad news, but using an analogy I have used before, that was nothing more than putting a band-aid on a gushing wound and claiming the wound was healing just because less blood visibly flowed.

Slamming money into the economy will not fix the underlying problem. If the root cause is not addressed then it does no more than throw good money after bad to watch it get sucked up before everything starts collapsing again.

In the meantime, all that money thrown at the problem adds to our debt/deficit.

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One Graph That Says It All On Obama's Failure To Create Job Growth

Liberty Works provides the only graph needed to see the failure of Obama's policies to create private-sector job growth by comparing job growth from the first 15 months of the Reagan Job Recovery to the first 15 months of the Obama Job Recovery.

Liberty Works offers more byway of reading on the topic as well.




Since we are showing the graphs that say it all, let us remind you of the one from yesterday on our out-of-control deficit.

(H/T Gateway Pundit for graph)

'nuff said?

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After Stimulus Plan Fails, Democrats Want....... Another Stimulus Plan

(H/T Gateway Pundit for graph)
Generally when something has failed, big time, logical prevails and they try something else and continue to do so until they find something that works.

Not the looney left though, noooooooooooooooo.

Obama and Democrats $787 billion plus economic stimulus package failed to create a net increase of jobs, put a band-aid on the gushing wound that is our economy, then claimed that because it hindered the sight of massive blood loss it was somehow working.

Newsflash- The economic stimulus plan failed, ended up with a net decrease of jobs, to the tune of about 500,000. Unemployment is on the rise (9.1 percent again), housing is on the decline, foreclosures are on the rise, the dollar on the decline. Our country is going bankrupt at an alarming pace. Dow has plunged into the longest weekly losing streak since 2004. CBS reports that chronic unemployment is worse than the Great Depression.

Here is something to think about:

The majority of states considered red, run by Republican elected officials have seen an increase in jobs and over the last decade and all together come out on the plus side.

The majority of blue states, run by Democratic elected officials, have seen a decrease in jobs over the last decade and all together have suffered over 2 million private-sector job losses.

Republicans have a job creation plan which include, but is not limited to;

Empowering Small Business Owners and Reducing Regulatory Burdens, Fixing the Tax Code to Help Job Creators, Increasing Competitiveness for American Manufacturers, Encouraging Entrepreneurship and Growth, Maximizing Domestic Energy Production to Ensure An Energy Policy for the Twenty-First Century and Paying Down America’s Unsustainable Debt Burden and Start Living Within Our Means.

Democrats have a plan too...... spend more.

House Democrats this week have amplified their calls for new spending on infrastructure and other federal projects in the face of May's discouraging job-creation figures.

Even as Republicans are insisting on "trillions" of dollars in spending cuts, Democrats maintain that a targeted injection of additional federal dollars in the near-term would go a long way toward reversing the hiring slump. Friday's disappointing job report, they say, only bolsters their case.

I used to think that the "tax and spend" label given to the Democrats was just that, a label. I see now that it is actually their identifying marker, there is no problem that throwing more taxpayer money at, money we don't have for the record, cannot fix according to Democrats. There is no tax that is a bad tax to cover all their reckless spending.

Does Keynesian Economics Really Work? Short answer, NO.

Let me tell you something else that has failed just as spectacularly as the economic stimulus package...... the Barack Obama experiment.

It is time to put someone in the White House, anyone at this point, that will start undoing the damage this man has done to our economy and our out-of-control deficit.

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YouCut Phase ll And Spending Cuts Dollar For Dollar Equal To Raise In Debt Limit

YouCut Phase 2 was unveiled Wednesday and works much like the original YouCut with a few additional advantages.

The Daily Caller explains:

“This updated version builds upon the success of the original YouCut program by allowing Americans to vote on a spending cut, and track the legislation in real-time, from introduction by a member of our freshman class, through the committee process, to a floor vote and ideally to enactment,” Cantor said.

The initial numbers for YouCut were quite impressive with 500,000 votes each round and Republicans are hoping to double that amount of participation from the general public.

The three options for this week for the public to vote on what spending to cut are Terminate the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation which would save $60 million, Terminate U.S. Contributions to the Asian Development Fund which would save $356 million or Terminate U.S. Contributions to the United Nations Population Fund which would save $400 million.

Below your vote option is a place where you can suggest your own ideas for spending cuts.

When the first version of YouCut was unveiled, Democrats controlled the House so Republicans could suggest a vote on the winning spending cut but was often refused the opportunity to bring it to the House floor by Nancy Pelosi who was Speaker of the House at that time.

Now that Republicans control the House, these votes will come to the floor and the newly improved site will allow you to track the progress of the cut, see when it comes to the floor, if it passed and the public can continue to participate by following up by encouraging your Senate reps to bring it to the floor. (Senate is still controlled by Democrats, so those calls will be important)

Democrats are fast to criticize the YouCut idea because the cuts are a drop in the bucket in comparison to the overall federal deficit.

Freshman Austin Scott of Georgia responds "Well, that’s fine. Lets get started. We didn’t get into this situation overnight. And we’re not gonna get out of it overnight. Nobody’s gonna wave a magic wand one night and we’re gonna wake up tomorrow and everything’s gonna be OK fiscally."

I have pointed out before and it is worth repeating. You put a bucket under a leak, each drop may be small in comparison to the size of the bucket itself, but as they all drip in, eventually the bucket fills up.

Nobody is going to pretend that each cut, individually, is going to fix our deficit problems and by the same token, Scott is correct, we didn't get this far into debt overnight so any and all cut must be accompanied by a concrete long term fiscal plan.

Human beings are hard wired into wanting to see results instantly but any savings, spending cuts and long term budget deficit plan is going to have to account for long term spending cuts where the results are not only seen instantly but where a change in spending set the standard in the long run.

So a plan to cut trillions isn't and shouldn't be trillions right this second but should be spread out so that over the course of time so that Washington is reprogrammed to spend less.

We could cut trillions right this second but without a spending plan for the future, we would simply be making a one time cut and the deficit would be rising again at an unsustainable level by the time the next budget comes up for a vote.

Debt Ceiling

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has made it clear that if Obama wants a debt limit increase it will be dollar for dollar, hand in hand with spending cuts to equal the amount of the increase.

Boehner took the ambitious stand in negotiations to raise America’s debt ceiling while speaking to the Economic Club of New York, saying, “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase. And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given.”

While the Treasury Department has yet to specify exactly the size of the increase Congress will need to approve for the $14.3 trillion debt limit, estimates are currently settling in around $2 trillion. That means, according to Speaker Boehner, that the White House and congressional Democrats would have to agree to spending cuts equal to at least $2 trillion as well.

The only thing “off the table” is tax increases, said Boehner. Everything else – including entitlements — will be subject to spending cuts.

Washington has spent decades learning the bad habit of spending more money than America has, then borrowing even more so they can spend even more. Anyone living on a budget knows that is not only unsustainable but if Washington was a household, that family would be homeless, unable to put food on the table, their credit cards taken away and their credit rating would be shot for a decade.

Politicians need to be retrained.

Republicans were thrown out of power by doing the very same thing and apparently they learned their lesson because not only did they promise while campaigning for the 2010 midterms to be fiscally responsible and force spending cuts, but after winning the largest net seats in the House of Representatives in over 70 years and being handed control of it, they are still fighting tooth and nail against Democrats to keep those campaign promises.

Now it is time to retrain the Democrats and if they continue to fight again fiscal responsibility, well, the 2012 elections can take care of that.

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$100,000.00 Power Line Prize For Most Effective Dramatization Of Debt Crisis

Quick pointer piece linking to Power Line who announces a competition with a $100,000.00 grand prize:

Teaser:

That leaves the critical one-third, many of them young, who for whatever reason do not yet understand the threat that federal spending and debt pose to them and to the country. Data have been collected; charts and graphs have been prepared; op-eds have been written. But many millions of Americans have not yet been reached or persuaded by these sober economic analyses. We need a marketing campaign: a sustained effort to use the tools of modern communication to reach and educate every American, and to mobilize popular opinion to demand reform from the politicians in Washington.

Toward that end, we are proud to announce the Power Line Prize. Power Line, in conjunction with the Freedom Club, is offering a grand prize of $100,000.00 to whoever can most effectively and creatively dramatize the seriousness of the federal debt crisis. Any medium of communication is eligible: video, song, screenplay, television commercial, painting, Power Point, essay, performance art, or anything else. The runner-up will receive a $15,000.00 prize, and two third-place finishers will receive $5,000.00 each. Entries must be submitted by midnight on July 15, 2011. Judges' decisions are final. All submissions become the property of Power Line and the Freedom Club. Entries must be original and unique to the Power Line Prize competition; i.e., they must not have been published or made public in any form prior to the time when contest winners are announced.

The contest web site is here

Head over there.

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Americans Prefer Cutting Spending Over Raising Taxes To Reduce Deficit

Yet another poll, by Gallup, tell our politicians what Americans expect from them and how they prefer Washington deal with the overwhelming national deficit.

73 percent of national adults understand that spending too much on federal programs that are either not needed or wasteful is the primary cause for our $14 trillion-plus national debt.

Only 22 percent believe that not raising enough money via taxes is to blame for the deficit.




When respondents were asked how they would prefer Congress attempt to reduce the federal budget deficit, 20 percent said only with spending cuts and 28 percent responded mostly with spending cuts, totaling 48 percent that want Washington to focus on cutting spending.

Despite the far left's howling about raising taxes being the be-all end-all of our deficit problems, only nine percent prefer the deficit be reduced mostly with tax increases and a mere two percent believe the deficit problem can be handled using only tax increases, totaling 11 percent of national adults prefer for Washington to use raising taxes to bring down our debt.

37 percent believe that spending cuts and tax increases together should be used.

The major partisan distinctions in response to this question reflect the choice between mostly/only spending cuts versus the equal use of spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans are most likely to favor the former; Democrats, the latter. Independents' views are between these two extremes. Relatively few Americans of any partisan identification favor mostly or only using tax increases to reduce the deficit.

Americans have been clearly informed of the positions the two political parties in Washington hold, having witnessed the very public battle over the recent budget deal passed where Republicans fought hard to include as many spending cuts as possible and Democrats fighting tooth and nail to limit those cuts.

According to another Gallup poll, 48 percent of Americans favor Republicans on the issue of the federal deficit with only 36 favoring Democrats. (via CNBC)

The federal budget was the only issue in which respondents clearly preferred one party over the other, with 48 percent favoring Republicans and 36 percent Democrats.

The poll found that Americans favored Republicans by smaller margins on four other issues: Afghanistan, the U.S. economy, immigration and jobs. Democrats held a small advantage on handling healthcare, the poll found.

When faced with poll after poll showing Americans know where the problems lie and showing preference to how Americans want the deficit reductions handled, the far left fall back to the position of "Americans are too stupid to really understand the problem". The mere 11 percent of the population that want only or mostly taxes increases, in their minds, are the only ones who truly have the brains to understand.

This is evidenced by an Yglesias post, which seems to be the meme the far left use whenever public opinion puts them so far into the minority.

His title "The Public At Least Thinks It Wants Spending Cuts To Be A Very Large Part of Deficit Reduction."

Arrogance be thy name.

According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll asking Americans about the direction of the country, 60 percent believe America to be on the wrong track going the wrong way with only 25 percent believing the opposite.

Rasmussen shows the number saying we are on the wrong track to 71 percent and CBS News/NY Times shows 70 percent say wrong track.

In 2010, midterms, Americans made a huge statement by giving the GOP a net gain in the House of Representatives which not only gave them control but was the largest net gain of seats seen in over 70 years.

Americans also handed Senate Republicans more seats, although Democrats still control the Senate (by a much smaller margin) and the White House.

During the budget recent budget battle, Speaker of the House, John Boehner, was quoted as saying "We control one-half of one-third of the government. We can't impose our will on another body. We can't impose our will on the Senate. All we can do is to fight for all of the spending cuts that we can get an agreement to."

While Congress controls the purse strings, no bill that passes the House of Representatives which includes massive spending cuts, as a plurality of the public prefers the deficit to be handled, can get to floor of the Senate because Harry Reid, a Democrat, is Senate majority leader and has the power to bring it to the floor and Democrats hold a small majority, so even if brought up, the GOP cannot get it passed.

If they did, the president, a Democrat himself, has the power to veto it.

This puts the choice directly into the hands of the American public in 2012. Are people like Yglesias correct in believing the Americans only "think" they know what they want, but don't "really mean" it?

I don't think so. I personally think Americans are smart. They understand the problems. They understand the solutions. Most importantly, they understand who is standing in the way of reaching those solutions.

In 2012, 23 Democratic Senate seats are in play and only 10 Republican held seats and the Democrat in the White House faces a reelection challenge.

Americans will have a clear choice of whether they wish to continue to see spending out of control or whether they want to see spending cuts without the massive battle over every dollar cut by a political party that seems to believe that spending more money than you have and continuing to borrow money is simply business as usual in Washington.

If they balanced their personal checkbooks in the same manner as they do Washington's, they would be paying more in overdraft fees to their banks than the whole budget itself.

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Democrats Join Republicans Insisting On Spending Cuts Tie In To Debt Limit Increase

With a national debt of over $14 trillion, government spending out of control and the very public battle between political parties showing Republicans insisting on spending cuts and Democrats fighting against them, the White House now needs Congress to increase our debt ceiling.

Republicans in Congress have insisted that any increase be tied to more spending cuts and a fiscal plan that shows Congress is serious about reducing the debt.

The Senate is still controlled by a Democratic majority and any deal made on raising the debt ceiling which includes spending cuts, will have to include Democratic support and it looks like that support is there.

Wapo reports:

The push-back has come in recent days from Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a freshman who is running for reelection next year. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told constituents during the Easter recess that he would not vote to lift the debt limit without a “real and meaningful commitment to debt reduction.”

Even Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), generally a stalwart White House ally, is undecided on the issue and is “hopeful” that a debt-ceiling bill can be attached to a measure to cut the federal deficit, said her spokesman, Linden Zakula. Klobuchar is also up for reelection next year.

Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.)releases a statement explaining why so many Democrats are joining with Republicans to insist deficit reduction be a part of the package.

“As catastrophic as it would be to fail to raise our debt ceiling, it’s even more irresponsible to not take this opportunity to own up to our unsustainable spending path,” Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.), another Democrat challenging the White House, said in a statement his office released this week. “If we don’t take action to reduce our deficit spending, Congress will be facing this same debt ceiling vote in the near term – still with no end to our deficits in sight.”

Polls conducted by a variety of sources, from January 2011 (Reuters) and as recently as April 2011, (CBS News) show that there is consistent opposition by Americans voters to raising the debt limit.

In 2012, 23 Democratic Senate seats are in play and 10 Republican Senate seats, so decisions made now will be watched and judged and will undoubtedly be a factor in how constituents vote in those elections.

Resurgent Republic:

President Obama’s policy of raising the federal debt limit without any preconditions relating to limiting spending, i.e. a "clean debt limit," is supported by only one-out-of-ten voters, the least popular option of three presented in a Resurgent Republic survey conducted jointly with the American Action Forum.

The second-ranking option overall is "not raising the debt limit under any circumstances." That option places second among Independents and Democrats, and is the top preference for Republicans.

The preferred option, drawing support from a plurality of voters overall, is "raising the debt limit, but only in exchange for substantial spending cuts and a commitment to reduce the deficit." The days of "routine" debt limit increase votes may be history, with voters holding firm views about the debt ceiling vote in a time of concern over the economy and a pervasive view that "we have got to stop spending money we don’t have," as has been seen in previous Resurgent Republic polling.

The Democrats listed above understand the Republicans in Congress enjoy an overwhelming amount of public support to lower the deficit, cut spending and get our fiscal house in order.

They understand this because their chances at being reelected depend on it.


Semi-related :

McConnell turns the tables on Reid in budget fight

“I understand that the Majority Leader would like to have a vote on the House-passed Ryan budget and we will,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “But we’ll have a vote on the President’s budget at the same time. Since there is no Democrat budget in the Senate, we’ll give our colleagues an opportunity to stand with the President in failing to address the problems facing our nation while calling for trillions in new spending, massive new debt and higher taxes on American energy, families and small businesses across the country.”

Ouch.

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Only Age Demographic To Favor Obama's Deficit Reduction Plan Are Those 18 to 29 Years Old

Browsing through stories over at Memeorandum I ran across a Hotline On Call headline and discussions associated with it that state "Seniors Most Favorable To Ryan Budget."

So clicking over to the Gallup link provided, I see something else that the headline doesn't cover.

It isn't just "seniors" that favor Republican Paul Ryan's budget reduction plan but it is every age group except those that fall between 18 to 29.



Those 30 to 49 years old favor Ryan's plan over Obama's by a 45 to 39 margin.

Those 50 to 64 years old favor Ryan's plan over Obama's by a 47 to 41 margin.

Those 65 and older favor Ryan's plan over Obama's by a 48 to 42 margin.

The only group that favors Obama's plan at all are those aged 18 to 29 by a 53/30 margin.

The same USA Today/Gallup survey, conducted April 20-23, finds Republicans holding a significant edge over Democrats in public perceptions of which party would do the better job of dealing with the federal budget. Nearly half of Americans, 48% prefer the Republicans in Congress on this question, while 36% favor the Democrats in Congress.

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This is good news for Republicans because the most active voters are in the older age groups.

This also shows the Democrats active campaign since Ryan unveiled his plan, to scare seniors into believing Republicans want to end their benefits, has failed dismally.

Ryan has been doing the rounds with a series of Town Hall style meetings to explain his plan and getting a decent reception with question and answer segments, mostly disturbed by preplanned Teamster and SEIU chapter disturbances.

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Fact Checker: Pelosi's Bloviated Bluster Is 'Absurd'

Washington Post's The Fact Checker has determined that Nancy Pelosi is a liar and rated her comments a 4 on the Pinocchios scale.

According to their rating scale that is the considered "whoppers".

Big surprise there.. NOT.

Pelosi's claim:

“In one of the bills before us, 6 million seniors are deprived of meals — homebound seniors are deprived of meals. People ask us to find our common ground, the middle ground. Is middle ground 3 million seniors not receiving meals? I don't think so. We've got to take this conversation from a debate about numbers and dollar figures and finding middle ground there to the higher ground of national values. I don't think the American people want any one of those 6 million people to lose their meals or the children who are being thrown off of Head Start and the rest of it.”

It seems she "misspoke", not once but three times in a row according to her spokesperson.

Anyone who believes it was a mistake instead of a deliberate attempt to terrify seniors, please email me, I have a prime piece of swampland in Florida to sell.

The first problem with Pelosi’s statistic is that, according to the agency’s budget documents, only about 2.6 million seniors receive such meals. That’s even less than what she decried as the mushy middle ground of compromise.

After we pointed out that fact, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said “she means meals for seniors — 6 million meals.” In 2011, the agency is expected to deliver a little over 200 million meals, so that’s a cut of about three percent.

That’s a pretty big “oops.” She referred to “6 million seniors,” “3 million seniors” and “6 million people.” We understand slips of a tongue, but three times in a row, so emphatically, is hard to fathom.

The Fact Checker's conclusion is that "Pelosi’s statement ranks high on this year’s list of bloviated bluster."

Furthermore:

It’s bad enough that she repeatedly mixed up 6 million meals and 6 million people — and made no effort to correct the record after her statement was reported in the media. But the figure she used appears to have been invented itself, with little basis in fact.

Nancy Pelosi is not serious about getting Washington's out of control spending under control, in fact, during her reign as Speaker of the House, according to the according to the U.S. Treasury Department, national debt rose by $5 trillion. (That was total back in October 2010)

At the close of business on Jan. 4, 2007, Pelosi’s first day as speaker, the national debt was $8,670,596,242,973.04 (8.67 trillion), according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. At the close of business on Oct. 22, it stood at $13,667,983,325,978.31 (13.67 trillion), an increase of 4,997,387,083,005.27 (or approximately $5 trillion).

Pelosi's pathetic attempt to scare seniors, her hyperbole, her "bloviated bluster" and her refusal to understand a country cannot continue to function by spending more than it takes in, is one of the major reasons American voters removed her from the Speaker of the House position and stripped that gavel from her grubby little paws.

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Support For Ryan's Path To Prosperity Comes From Unlikely Place: Slate- 'Good Plan'

Reminder from yesterday's post for those that wish to read the GOP's Path To Prosperity for themselves instead of letting the firestorm of opinion pieces in the old and new media tell you what to think.

Read the Full 73 page Report- Key Facts and Summary- A Contrast In Budgets (PDF's from budget.house.gov)

In going through the the discussions and massive amounts of ink dedicated to either hailing the budget plan or criticizing it, I found support for Paul Ryan's plan from a very unlikely place.

Slate, not known for a bastion of conservative thinking, headlines with "Good Plan".

For the past 30 years, Republicans have been hypocrites about spending. They've raged against big government without ever proposing the kinds of cuts necessary to bring federal expenditures in line with tax revenues. Democrats have been more fiscally responsible, producing an actual budget surplus during Bill Clinton's second term. But they've been little better than Republicans when it comes to confronting the nation's long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven by the projected growth in entitlement spending.

This dynamic of political evasion and reality-denial may have undergone a fundamental shift today with the release of Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 budget resolution. The Wisconsin Republican's genuinely radical plan goes where Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich never did by terminating the entitlement status of Medicare and Medicaid. (It doesn't touch the third major entitlement, Social Security, though Ryan has elsewhere argued for extending its life by gradually raising the retirement age to 70.) Ryan changes Medicare into a voucher, which would be used to purchase private health insurance. He turns Medicaid into a block grant for states to spend as they choose. Though his budget committee isn't responsible for taxes, Ryan includes the boldest tax reform proposal since the 1980s, proposing to lower top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent and end deductions. While he's at it, Ryan caps domestic spending, repeals Obamacare, slashes farm subsidies, and more.

If the GOP gets behind his proposals in a serious way, it will become for the first time in modern memory an intellectually serious party—one with a coherent vision to match its rhetoric of limited government. Democrats are within their rights to point out the negative effects of Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the poor. He was not specific about many of his cuts, and Democrats have a political opportunity in filling in the blanks. But the ball is now in their court, and it will be hard to take them seriously if they don't respond with their own alternative path to debt reduction and long-term solvency.

The Slate piece delves into some of the meat and potatoes of the plan and concludes at the end of the article:

But more than anyone else in politics, Rep. Ryan has made a serious attempt to grapple with the long-term fiscal issue the country faces. He has a largely coherent, workable set of answers. If you don't like them, now you need to come up with something better.

Consider the conversation on how to bring America's fiscal house in order, started.

[Update] Video below shows Ryan stating "It all comes down to this: Either you fix this problem now where we, you can guarantee people who’ve already organized their lives around these programs get what they have coming to them, or you pick the president’s path, which is do nothing, punt, duck, kick the can down the road, and then we have a debt crisis and then its pain for everybody."



H/T CNS News

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Paul Ryan Unveils The GOP Path To Prosperity: Budget To Cut $6.2 Trillion Over 10 Years

Read the Full 73 page Report- Key Facts and Summary- A Contrast In Budgets (PDF's from budget.house.gov)



Paul Ryan, a Republican, represents Wisconsin's first congressional district and serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee, writes an op-ed in the Wall street Journal explaining the GOP Path to Prosperity.

"Our budget cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president's budget over the next 10 years and puts the nation on track to pay off our national debt."--- Paul Ryan, Wall Street Journal April 5, 2011

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.

During the last few months, the GOP controlled House of Representatives has been in a public battle with the Democratically controlled Senate and Democratically controlled White House over spending cuts, with the GOP pushing for more and more spending cuts and the Democrats holding on to every bit of government spending they can.

Below I am going to show two visuals. One from Business Insider from February 2011 showing an income statement for the United States and the other provided by Ryan in his WSJ op-ed.

Click to enlarge

According to the pie chart above the U.S. brought in $2.2 trillion and spent $3.5 trillion.

58 percent of those expenses are from entitlement programs. 20 percent from Social Security, 22 percent from Medicare and Federal Medicaid and 16 percent from Unemployment Insurance and other entitlements.

Those numbers were taken directly from The White House Office of Budget Management.

Anyone who lives on a budget or deals with money in any way should understand that level of spending vs revenue is not sustainable.

The graph Paul released in his WSJ piece shows what will happen if something drastic isn't done.



The GOP Path to Prosperity leaves nothing off the table, addresses entitlements in a way that no one has dared to address them in decades for fear of public backlash because while voters continue to harp on Washington for their continual overspending and enlargement of government, voters also cringe at the thought of specific targeted entitlements and the change needed to stop this free-fall into debt America is on.

The major components in Paul's proposal are Reduce spending, Welfare reform, Health and retirement security, Budget enforcement and Tax reform.

Reduce 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.

More:

A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage's analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.

From the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) budget proposal, for the first time in recent memory, sets our nation on a different and better path. It tackles the massive spending excesses of the recent past and the entitlement crisis that is beginning to command our fiscal future. It rejects the politics of government dependence, massively higher taxes and the inevitability of national decline. No budget in decades has had the potential for so fundamentally improving the nation’s prosperity and restoring its vast promise. This is a monumental budget proposal for monumental times, and it opens a serious and necessary conversation about the future of our nation and its great legacy of freedom, opportunity, and self-government.

They conclude:

But in the end, let’s remember where we are and what Chairman Ryan has accomplished. Last year, neither the House nor the Senate passed a required budget resolution. This year, President Obama proposed a budget that more than doubles the national debt. In the first budget of the new Congress, Chairman Ryan has forged a serious path to fix our nation’s fiscal and economic crisis. The House, the Senate, and the President must now do their part so that we may reclaim our nation’s future.

You will hear a lot of talk, Conservatives hailing this plan, Democrats criticizing it, politicians pushing their own political agenda and pundits pushing their own ideology.

Click the links at the top of this post, read it, do the math and decide for yourself if we can sustain the path we are on and if the answer is no, then determine for yourself if you believe this proposal addresses the concerns you have as individuals.

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