Paul Ryan Responds to President Obama Deficit Speech VIDEO

WASHINGTON – House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan made the following statement after listening to the President’s speech on deficit reduction:

“When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront.

“We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past. By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future. We are looking for bipartisan solutions, not partisan rhetoric. When the President is ready to get serious about confronting this challenge, we'll be here.”

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Key Facts About the President’s Speech

General:

* Counts unspecified savings over 12 years, not the 10-year window by which serious budget proposals are evaluated.

* Postpones all savings until 2013 – after his reelection campaign.

* Runs away from the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations on Social Security – puts forward no specific ideas or even a process to force action.

* Calls for the appointment of another commission, after mostly omitting from his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget any of proposals submitted by the commission he appointed last year.

* Non-specific framework fails to meet Fiscal Commission's definition of sustainability.

Taxes:

* Proposes to raise taxes on the American people by more than $1 trillion, devastating our fragile economy and stifling job creation.

* Endorsed the Fiscal Commission’s ideas on taxes, which specifically called for lower tax rates and a broader base, but then called for higher tax rates. Which is it?

* Government health and retirement programs are growing at more than twice the speed of the economy. At the current rate of spending, revenue would have to rise “by more than 50 percent” just to keep debt at its current level, according to the Government Accountability Office. That means tax increases across-the-board, now and in the future.

Medicare:

* Instead of proposing structural reforms that would actually reduce health care costs, the President proposed across-the-board cuts to current seniors’ care.

* Strictly limits the amount of health care seniors can receive within the existing structure of unsustainable government health care programs.

* Gives more power to unelected bureaucrats in Washington to determine what treatments seniors should or shouldn’t get, against a backdrop of costs that continue to rise.

* Conceded that the relentlessly rising cost of health care is the primary reason why the nation is threatened by debt, and implicitly conceded that his health care law failed to solve the problem.

* Eviscerates the only competitive element anywhere in health-care entitlement programs – the competition amongst Part D prescription-drug plans – which allowed the drug benefit to come in 41 percent under budget.

Medicaid:

* Acknowledges that the open-ended financing of Medicaid is a crippling financial burden to both states and the federal government, but explicitly rejected the only solution to this problem, which is to give states the freedom they need to design systems that work for the unique needs of their own populations.

Defense:

* Proposes more cuts on top of $78 billion in cuts included in his own defense budget, which he proposed just two months ago – all at a time when he continues to task the military with new missions.

* Secretary Gates has said that the military needs 2 percent – 3 percent real growth just to keep executing the missions that DOD has already been assigned.

* Secretary Gates described deficit reduction plans that let budget targets drive defense policy as “math, not strategy.”

Contact: Conor Sweeney (202) 226-7270

VIDEO and IMAGE CREDIT: VideeWell

TEXT CREDIT: U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan Washington, DC Office. 1233 Longworth House Office Bldg Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-3031 Fax: (202) 225-3393

Rob Portman Happy Tax Freedom Day

This year, on average, Ohioans will work 102 days to pay for their tax obligations to the federal, state, and local government. Tax Freedom Day, calculated by the non-partisan Tax Foundation, arrives on April 12th and is the first day that Ohioans can finally begin to reap the rewards of their own hard work. That means that instead of being able to save for your future or pay your child’s tuition, your rent or mortgage, or pay your electric bill, it takes 102 days just to pay taxes.

We seem to be working harder each year to pay for the cost of government. Tax Freedom Day arrived three days later this year than it did last year and almost a full three months later than it did in 1910. This measure of taxation ignores the current year’s deficit, which is at its highest ever – $1.5 trillion. If the IRS actually collected enough taxes to finance all the federal government will spend in 2011, it would have to collect about $1.5 trillion more, moving Tax Freedom Day back to May 23rd instead of April 12th.

Even without including the deficit, Americans will pay more in taxes this year than they will spend on groceries, shelter, and clothing combined.

It’s discouraging that because of the amount of taxes we pay, we don’t start working for ourselves until 102 days into the year. But there is another issue, too, and that is the cost to comply with an increasingly complex tax code. According to an IRS' Taxpayer Advocate Service report, the tax code, “has grown so long that it has become challenging even to figure out how long it is.”

Individuals and businesses, both small and large, face daunting challenges each year when tax season arrives. Job creators are faced with a choice between adding new workers or paying for the remarkably high costs of complying with an onerous tax code. The Tax Foundation projects that compliance alone will cost over $391 billion in 2011. At a time when our unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, we need to be doing all that we can to reduce the overall tax burden, including the compliance costs on job creators so they can add new employees.

If big-government policies and irresponsible deficit spending continue on the unsustainable path that they are currently on, Tax Freedom Day will likely come on a much later date for future generations, forcing Ohioans to work even longer to pay for a growing government.

Over the past two years, I have traveled to every one of Ohio’s 88 counties and visited over 100 factories, farms and businesses to get input on how to bring jobs back to Ohio. Many cited the burden of taxes, both the amount of tax and the administrative costs to comply with such a complicated tax code. The Job Creation Act, which I introduced on the very first day possible, reduces the burden of taxes on workers and small businesses. Economists estimate the payroll tax section of the Job Creation Act alone would create more than 1.4 million jobs.

In addition, I am working to simplify and reduce rates in the tax code; including reducing the corporate tax rate to 25%, which has the potential to create 5.3 million jobs over ten years; and provide incentives for entrepreneurs to invest in plants, equipment and workers that will help innovation and growth in the United States.

On this Tax Freedom Day, let’s rededicate ourselves to a government that lives within its means and a simpler, more sensible tax code that reduces the burdens for all of us.

TEXT CREDIT: Senator Portman, U.S. Senator for Ohio Washington, DC B40D Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 Phone: 202-224-3353

IMAGE CREDIT: by SenRobPortman