Obama vs. Ryan's plan to Reduce Federal Debt

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Overall Deficit Reduction Goals


White House: Find $4 trillion in savings in "12 years or less."

Paul Ryan: Find $4 trillion in savings by 2022

Deficit Commission: Find $4 trillion in savings by 2020.


Spending Cuts


White House: Save $750 billion in domestic spending over 12 years. Review military spending for further savings. Maintain or increase spending in medical research, clean energy technology, roads, airports, broadband access, education, and job training.

Paul Ryan: Bring non-security discretionary spending to below 2008 levels, resulting in a 33 percent cut in non-security discretionary spending in 2020 below the baseline. Reduce inefficient defense spending by $178 billion but reinvest $100 billion to achieve savings of $78 billion.

Deficit Commission: Cut $100 billion from defense and $100 billion from non-defense spending by 2015 by taking total spending down to 2008 levels over two years, and then limit growth to half the rate of inflation. Put special limits on war spending.


Tax Reform


White House: Let the Bush tax cuts expire for "the wealthy," which will save more than $700 billion over ten years. Limit itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2% of Americans to reduce the deficit by an additional $320 billion over ten years. Convene a panel on tax reform. (Another part of the speech calls for "tax reform to cut about $1 trillion in spending from the tax code")

Paul Ryan: Extend the Bush tax cuts and enact tax reform. Repeal $800 billion in tax increases imposed by Affordable Care Act. Enact simpler, less burdensome tax code for households and small businesses. Consolidate and lowers tax rates for individuals so that the top rate comes down from 35 to 25 percent and pay for it by sweeping out deductions and exemptions. Lower corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent and pay for it by sweeping out tax expenditures.

Deficit Commission: Enact comprehensive tax reform. Consolidate and lower individual income rates to 12%, 22%, and 28%. Eliminate most tax expenditures that don't protect the low-income. Tax capital gains and dividends as normal income. Lower corporate income rate to 28%, eliminate most deductions, and move to a territorial tax system, which would not tax profits made by U.S. multinationals overseas.


Health Care Reforms


White House: Keep the Affordable Care Act. Find $500 billion in additional savings by reducing waste, using Medicare's purchasing power to drive down prices, and work with governors to keep down Medicaid costs. Strengthen the independent Medicare advisory board to control costs in Medcare.

Paul Ryan: Repeal the Affordable Care Act. Starting in 2022, convert Medicare into a voucher program where the size of the voucher is sensitive to the senior's income and grows slower than health care inflation. Establish a medical savings account for low income beneficiaries. Convert Medicaid cost-sharing into block grants that increase according to population growth and inflation.

Deficit Commission: Keep most of the Affordable Care Act. Strengthen the independent Medicare advisory board. Reform the "doc fix" and pay for it by increasing cost sharing in Medicare. Establish a long-term budget for total health care spending that limits health care cost growth to GDP+1%.



Social Security Changes


White House: Unspecified changes: "both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations."

Paul Ryan: Unspecified changes.

Deficit Commission: On benefits side: shrink Social Security checks by changing the benefits formula; slowly raise the retirement age to 69 by 2075; refine the cost-of-living measure used to increase Social Security checks every year. On the revenue side: raise the "ceiling" of taxable income to 90 percent of earnings; create higher minimum and old-age benefits.

Difference is, I believe Paul Ryan is serious about cutting spending, I do not believe Obama.

Obama is pushing for class warfare and tax increases, our economy is already struggling, Obama wants to hike taxes on small business owners making their struggle to stay in business even more difficult.

Obama's plan looks like income redistribution and more of the same.

What do you think about the recommendations of the Deficit commision?

Obamacare (barring a judge suddenly retires or dies) is likely to be ruled Unconstitutional in the US Supreme Court. Also the limiting wartime expenditures by military is kinda idiotic.

Obamacare (barring a judge suddenly retires or dies) is likely to be ruled Unconstitutional in the US Supreme Court. Also the limiting wartime expenditures by military is kinda idiotic.

Our military has being doing warfare retail, when it should be doing it retail. If we had dumped our nukes on the Middle East back in 2001, do you think we would be having this trouble now?

How did we win WW2 in the Pacific? By nuking our enemy. The lesson is very clear. If you have nuclear weapons, then use them.

ruveyn

Would their be a legitimate concern over nuclear fallout to the neighboring countries considered our allies?

In a real war collateral damage is inevitable.

Over one million civillians were killed in WW2 on the enemy side. C'est dommage. War is a b***h. In a war people are killed and their sh*t is all busted up.

ruveyn

And, is a real war of any kind a solution to fight extremist terrorists. How do you kill an ideology?

?

What do you think about the recommendations of the Deficit commision?

By killing everyone who holds that ideology. next question?

It is not easy, but it is possible. The only question is: is the cost worth it?

ruveyn

The deficit commission's recommendations are pretty good too. Notably they follow Ryan's approach of cutting the top income tax rate. Obama should get a clue from the fact that his own experts recommend that.

With Obama refusing to back the commission, though, their proposal has no political support and is dead on the vine.