United Liberty

While President Barack Obama’s budget went down in flames in the House on Wednesday evening — though introduced by Republicans since no Democrat apparently would carry it, Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal cleared the House yesterday:

By a mostly party-line vote, the House of Representatives approved Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution today by a count of 228-191, slashing trillions of dollars in federal spending over the next decade, but inflaming Congressional Democrats for proposing controversial reforms to programs like Medicare.
[…]
Ryan’s budget blueprint claims less than $5 trillion relative to the president’s budget proposal, and spends $3.5 trillion less over 10 years than the current spending levels. It also brings deficits below 3 percent of GDP by 2015. It would raise $2.73 trillion in tax revenue in 2013, leaving a $800 billion projected deficit for 2013 compared to $3.53 trillion in budget outlays.

Zero Democrats supported the proposal while 10 Republicans voted against it.

You can view the vote here.

Ryan’s budget has come under fire from many conservative grassroots and Tea Party activists because it doesn’t balance the budget quickly enough. FreedomWorks, which has supported Tea Party causes, released a comparison of the various budget proposals that are the table, including those from President Obama, Rep. Ryan, and Sen. Rand Paul. They note that, while Ryan’s plan would produce a balanced budget by 2039, far later than many conservatives feel is necessary.

The far more conservative budget put together by the Republican Study Committee was shot down by the House, showing that the intra-party friction we saw last year, which some of us thought may have been an issue this year, doesn’t seem to be a big factor right now. The House GOP is, as you can see, largely standing behind Rep. Ryan’s budget, realizing it’s a better option than anything else on the table.

Senate Democrats, which haven’t produced a version of a budget in a few years, are highly unlikely to move forward on what the House has produced. And to see them once again shirking their legislative duty truly is a shame.