By John McDonald, PoliticsPA Contributor
Setting out to “demonstrate that it is in fact possible to balance the budget within 10 years without raising taxes,” United States Senator Pat Toomey on Tuesday unveiled a proposal he vowed would balance the federal budget by 2020 and produce a surplus a year later.
The former Lehigh Valley Congressman and Club For Growth president discussed his plan at a Capitol Hill news conference attended by Senate GOP colleagues Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and others.
Citing a current fiscal trajectory that would result in “enormously problematic” debt and deficit accumulations, Toomey pledged that his plan would reduce publicly-held debt to around 52 percent of GDP (down from the current 69 percent of GDP).
Part of that effort, he said, would involve cutting federal spending to 18.5 percent of GDP. The plan would slash non-defense discretionary spending to 2006 levels ($435 billion) and would adopt defense spending cuts introduced by Secretary Robert Gates in January. Toomey noted that his budget assumes a “full withdrawal” from both Iraq and Afghanistan by 2018.
Regarding the Ryan Plan
Unlike the budget proposal developed by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), which was passed by the House last month, Toomey’s plan makes no changes to Social Security and limited modifications to Medicare – described as “restoring the fictitious and unspecified cuts projected in the president’s budget,” according to summary of the plan provided by Toomey’s office.
In fact, the same document notes that Toomey’s plan spends more on Medicare than both President Obama’s proposed budget and the one introduced by Rep. Ryan.
“It’s my view that a permanent solution to the fiscal challenges that we face will require broader reforms than what we have in this budget,” Toomey said during Tuesday’s announcement event. “Ultimately, we need to reform the Social Security Program; we need to reform Medicare. But this budget represents what we think is a necessary first step.”
As he has been up until this point, Toomey was careful not to portray his own budgetary efforts as competitive with those in the Republican-controlled House, pledging to vote for Rep. Ryan’s plan if he has the opportunity. Toomey’s strategy does replicate the House-passed proposal to convert Medicaid to a block grant program.
Though he stopped short of saying he’d vote for Toomey’s shorter-term plan, Rep. Ryan released a statement lauding the Keystone State senator’s proposal and challenging Democrats to “work with Congressional Republicans and the American people to advance a budget that meets the challenges of today.”
“I appreciate the hard work of my friend Senator Pat Toomey in putting forward specific proposals to address our nation’s fiscal and economic challenges. His proposed FY2012 budget incorporates many of the reforms advanced in the House-passed FY2012 Budget Resolution, which puts the budget on the path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity,” Rep. Ryan said in a prepared statement. “I remain grateful to all Senate Republicans for their leadership in changing Washington’s culture of spending, and for their steadfast commitment to fiscal discipline.”
PA Dems Pounce…
As details of Toomey’s proposal emerged on Monday and Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party circulated emails noting that the plan appeared to retain cost-saving Medicare Advantage cuts that Toomey and others had criticized Joe Sestak for supporting last year.
The email featured links to a Toomey-For-Senate ad in which a state voter criticizes Sestak’s support for Obamacare, which went “too far, even forcing changes to my Medicare.” Another ad, this one produced by the conservative Crossroads GPS group, scolded Sestak for supporting cuts to the Medicare Advantage plan – a facet of Medicare administered by private insurers.
Though Toomey’s plan pledges to “repeal ObamaCare taxes, spending and entitlement programs,” The Hill’s Julian Pecquet noted on Monday that it also retains “its Medicare cuts and mandates changes to state medical malpractice laws that aim to save the federal government about $64 billion.”
“Pat Toomey’s budget proposal is a dud for many reasons, but its blatant hypocrisy is likely the most offensive part to the people of Pennsylvania,” Mark Nicastre, spokesman for the state party, said in a statement emailed to PoliticsPA. “It’s now clear that Pennsylvanians can’t trust Pat Toomey.”
While Pawlenty Praises.
Meanwhile, former Minnesota Governor and prospective GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty was quick to praise Toomey for producing a “common-sense budget.”
“We can balance the budget in the next decade, but it requires the sort of smart choices and leadership being offered by Senator Toomey and several other Senate Republicans. I applaud him for having the courage to say no to more out-of-control deficits,” Pawlenty said in statement posted on his website.
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6 Responses
The choice is ours. We can balance the budget now or we can balance it later. It will eventually be balanced one way or another. No one is stupid enough to loan the U.S. more and more money forever. We are currently living in a false economy supported by massive deficit spending. Economic reality and a massive debt hangover is coming sometime in the next ten years and it could last a decade or more.
Every single day we borrow $4 billion more, making a balanced budget more and more difficult. There is not enough money in the world to bail the U.S. out. Our ability to continue deficit spending will eventually collapse under high interest rates and lack of money available to borrow.
With five more years of trillion dollar deficits, government printed money and inflation will cripple our economy. Budgets will be drastically cut, if only because inflation will destroy the value of the dollar. Many businesses will have already left the country and taken many good paying jobs with them. Protests and violence will not stop people from dying for lack of private and public services.
If we follow the Obama plan for 5 more years, the financial hangover caused by another $8 or $9 trillion of debt will cause a lot more suffering than people can even imagine now. Interest on the debt alone will cost $1 trillion per year.
The American superpower will soon be dead. George Bush was a bad president. Obama is now the leading competitor for the title of worst president ever.
The time to balance the budget is this year. Ten years from now it will be too late.
Susan said: “We need a unitary system to be able to control costs and to provide the same treatment to everyone”.
Sure worked well for Greece!
Pyramid schemes NEVER work.
Social Security AND Medicare AND Medicaid should be totally dismantled and perhaps a safety net for the needy put in place.
This socialistic culture is bogus and should end. This is the time.
IF the risks and the costs were spread over the entire population instead of the only the elderly, SURE.
The point is, you can’t fix a fragmented “system” because if you squeeeze one area, another just goes up. We need a unitary system to be able to control costs and to provide the same treatment to everyone
Medicare is going broke and already pays less than the cost of many services. It can’t even sustain the addition of the newest batch of baby boomers, and you honestly think it could sustain the entire population of the United States? Reality, please….
Well, if it’s a Toomey plan you can bet it sticks it to everyone else in order to further enrich the wealthy.
Medicaid block granting, for one, is a complete non-starter.
Here’s my plan-as it is medical costs that are screwing up expenditures, let’s get rid of our fragmented, high-overhead non-system and open Medicare to everyone with a sliding scale premium system and serious science-based effectiveness research.