John Spratt: “here is the Ryan resolution on the back of an envelope: look at what it does for reconciliation, because it does it…”

“here is the Ryan resolution on the back of an envelope: look at what it does for reconciliation, because it does it elsewhere within the budget proposal. Mr. Ryan proposes crippling, emasculating Medicare and Medicaid totaling over $250 billion, $278 billion altogether in hypothetical, wholly impractical, and unlikely cuts. But what is the net effect? Because at the same time and in the same bill he lowers taxes, has a tax cut of $447 billion. The net effect is an increase to the deficit of $168 billion. That is why we have with this kind of arithmetic, why they have added $3.1 trillion to the debt of the United States. Alternatively, we offer the base budget, the Spratt resolution, the Democratic resolution. It moves to balance by 2012, it leaves in place all of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003. They will be in place in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010; and it leaves until the future the decisions as to whether or not and to what extent to renew these tax cuts when they expire, not because of this resolution but because of the way you wrote them, in the year 2010. We fully fund defense. We don't have a lot of left over, but we husband our resources to do more for education, more for science and innovation, more for veterans health care, and more for SCHIP which barely ranks an honorable mention in their budget.”