Montgomery County GOP

Chairman's Message:
Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity is a
Blueprint for the Long Haul

Earlier this week, one of the Montgomery County's Central Committee members mentioned that she had not seen District 17 Legislative District Chair and Committee Member Jim Herz recently. Trust me I told her, Jim has been very busy lately doing some very good work.

Jim is a Republican staff member of the House Budget Committee chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. While much attention has been focused on the prospect of a government shutdown, perhaps the more significant budget work has been in preparing the Chairman Ryan's "Path to Prosperity."

While some media commentators try to handicap the short term blame and credit battle over who won or lost in the government shutdown contest about the budget for the remaining five months of the current fiscal year, the bigger picture challenge remains returning the country fiscal sanity over the coming decade. On this, Budget Chairman Paul Ryan has produced an impressive "Path to Prosperity" which proposal would cut deficits by more than $4 trillion.

Properly, the Ryan plan does not just focus on spending reduction, but does so in the context of returning the economy to prosperity.

Here are its major components of Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" [1]: 

• 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: 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.

As a former Congressional Committee Counsel myself, I know that no staff member should ever take credit for their principal's work. (Forgive me Jim for breaking the rules.)

Never the less, we are very proud of what out Central Committee colleague has been doing. Keep it up Jim.

Mark Uncapher
Montgomery County Republican Chairman

[1] See http://paulryan.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf