Washington and the nation are abuzz over Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisconsin) plan addressing the fiscal crisis and promising to cut $4.4 trillion in a decade. The Democrats and President Obama have talked and talked about the crisis, offered to cut “millions of dollars” (a miniscule amount compared to the debt and deficit) and their “solutions” have only made the situation worse. Now a crisis of Armageddon proportions looms just around the corner. The nation needs someone to take the risk of providing leadership, and Congressman Ryan is stepping up to the challenge.
For years, politicians have paid lip service to the fact that something needs to be done — that something has to be done to preempt the crisis. The President and Congress bloviated about cutting spending, but the most it ever translated to was just slightly trimming the proposed increases being touted as absolutely essential; nobody was ever willing to actually cut the level of out-of-control spending and certainly not come close to touching entitlements.
Congressman Ryan’s plan wondrously changes the debate in profound ways. The most obvious new aspect of the debate is that the amount of proposed cuts has jumped from a head-fake of mere millions in cuts to an amount in the trillions with the heft to make a real difference. Ryan’s formal proposal — a budget resolution for 2012 — reduces the deficit by $4.4 trillion in a decade and cuts spending by more than $6 trillion. The Ryan plan would cut federal spending to 20 percent of the GDP by 2015. Even with such drastic budget reductions, the federal budget would not be balanced until 2030.
While his critics wail about draconian cuts — they are large, but only because they return us to the level of spending before Obama took office (hardly a conservative level) and drove spending through the roof — Concerned Women for America (CWA) believes that the crisis can be averted only by reigning in the bloated federal government. We think that the American people are ready to trust politicians who will be honest with them and talk about the situation in realistic terms about what it is going to take for us to avoid complete financial ruin. We also believe that our elected officials should be willing to do something, rather than burden our children and grandchildren with a mountain of debt and destroy the financial future of the nation.
CWA applauds Congressman Ryan’s efforts as a firm step in the right direction. As the Congressman noted, “This is not a budget, this is a cause.” That cause is to get America to confront the fiscal threat facing the nation before it is too late and motivate Congress to act on ways to get the nation back on a secure financial foundation.