The Ryan Budget vs. the Obama Budget:
A New Heartland Institute StudyBy selecting House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney reframed the 2012 presidential election as a contest between Ryan’s 2013 proposed budget, which was adopted by the entire Republican House, and President Barack Obama’s 2013 proposed budget, which can be taken as Obama’s most authoritative and detailed statement of what he would do in a second term.
In a new Heartland Institute Policy Brief, Peter Ferrara explains in detail why Ryan’s budget offers a fiscally responsible path back to American prosperity, and why Obama’s budget does not.
“Obama’s budget establishes a future course that exacerbates the current fiscal problem, what I have called elsewhere ‘America’s ticking bankruptcy bomb,’ into an even worse nightmare scenario,” writes Ferrara, who is senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at The Heartland Institute. “Ryan’s budget fixes the problem so it doesn’t eat alive the United States’ world-leading standard of living. That stark contrast is explained in detail in this paper.”
Click here for a PDF of the policy brief.
To schedule an interview with Peter Ferrara for your program or publication, please contact Tammy Nash at [email protected] and 312/377-4000. After regular business hours, contact Jim Lakely at [email protected] and 312/731-9364.
Among Ferrara’s findings:
- The Ryan budget restores and maintains federal spending to 20.1 percent of GDP by 2015; the Obama budget increases federal spending to 30 percent of GDP in 2027, 40 percent by 2040, 50 percent by 2060, and a staggering 80 percent by 2080.
- The Ryan budget would spend nearly a trillion dollars fewer per year than the Obama budget.
- The Ryan budget includes pro-growth tax reforms that would restore federal revenues to their long-term, postwar, historical average of 18.3 percent of GDP by 2015; the Obama budget proposes increasing taxes by $2 trillion over the next decade, including a doubling of income tax revenues, corporate tax revenues, and payroll taxes in stages over the next decade.
- The Ryan budget would reduce the annual federal deficit to no more than $182 billion by 2017; the Obama budget contains trillion-dollar deficits now, and as far as the eye can see.
- The Ryan budget would reform Medicare, and increase its long-term solvency, by introducing private-market reforms to drive down costs; the Obama budget contains Obamacare, which cuts nearly $5 trillion from Medicare through 2023.
- The Ryan budget would reform Medicaid by block-granting federal dollars to the states, saving $810 billion over the first 10 years and increasing efficiency in the system; the Obama budget, under Obamacare, puts 100 million Americans on an unreformed Medicaid program by 2021, up from 57 million today.
Writes Peter Ferrara in his conclusion:
“Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget provides a roadmap to regaining control over federal taxes, spending, deficits, and debt, rebuilding the economy and restoring the American Dream in the process. President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget provides a roadmap to record-smashing government spending, deficits, and debt, promising long-term economic stagnation and decline for America. The American people will decide this fall which road they want to take.”
Click here to download a free copy of the new Heartland Policy Brief, “The Ryan Budget vs. the Obama Budget” by Peter Ferrara.
The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Peter Ferrara, J.D., is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and an advisor for entitlement reform and budget policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation.
