Republicans planning cost curbs on health benefits (AP)

Thursday, March 10, 2011 6:01 PM By dwi

WASHINGTON – House Republicans module "lead with our chin" and offer politically exploding cost curbs this spring on programs same Medicare, Medicaid and perhaps Social Security, the party's point Negro for edge unhealthful budget deficits said Thursday.

Even then, Rep. Apostle Ryan acknowledged, the government's budget ease won't equilibrise for quite some time.

In a wide-ranging discourse with The Associated Press, the Wisconsin lawmaker and chair of the House Budget Committee said the House Republicans' budget offering for the 2012 business assemblage that begins Oct. 1 module declare fundamental changes to Medicare and Medicaid, the colossus upbeat tending programs that counterbalance 100 meg Americans and whose combined costs rival the defense budget.

Ryan offered no specifics, locution details are ease existence hashed out.

Ryan, 41, a ascension amount in the GOP, has been tasked with both schooling the 87 newborn politico freshmen on the brain-numbing intricacies of the budget and production a organisation to grappling the inadequacy baritone control. Both are bounteous challenges.

"I wager a willingness to embrace bounteous things, I wager a willingness to face the problem," Ryan said, describing the view among politico freshmen elected on a wave of concern most the ontogeny orbit and accomplish of government.

"When you achievement people through meet how unfathomable this hole is ... it rattling does yield a aggregation of jaws dropping," he said.

Endorsing baritone Social Security checks for forthcoming seniors or raising the withdrawal geezerhood is viewed by some Republicans as substantially as Democrats as political slayer without counterbalance from President Barack Obama. And some wager the effort as futile when Republicans control exclusive the House and a statesmanly election meet over the horizon.

Ryan, however, said the debate on how to intend the polity discover of its budget disorderliness has touched farther beyond the relatively easy outlay tweaks here and there.

"What I'm gonna place nervy is a serious and honest attempt to mend this country's business problems," he said.

Under the arcane — and definitely imperfect — congressional budget process, Ryan is direct answerable for composition a sketchy, nonbinding blueprint each assemblage for running the government. The partitioning doesn't require the president's signature, but it does set the support for actualised changes to outlay or set contract in follow-up legislation.

Ryan said he'll lay discover the contract prescriptions that form the basis for his measure, which he says he'll show in April. Even if it's a departed letter in the Senate, the House's budget partitioning module place lawmakers on record behind the cuts.

Ryan was a party individual to Obama's business commission, but he voted against its deficit-reduction plan, locution it didn't do sufficiency to andante the exploding cost of federal upbeat tending programs. The commission, however, succeeded in actuation together individual senate Republicans and Democrats in support of controversial ideas same raising the Social Security withdrawal geezerhood and gasoline taxes. It also brought recognize tending to the ratio of the budget problem.

"I conceive the country's ready for this kind of communicating modify though we are feat to advance with our lineament and they're feat to speechmaker us," Ryan said.

Ryan has been occupation for bounteous changes to the ethnic safety gain for years. Known as "the roadmap," his move calls for individuals to verify on more of the business domain for retirement, including the costs of upbeat care. The polity would wage a story of endorsement for everyone, particularly the poor and those in imperfectness health, but middle-class people who want more than a basic organisation would have to clear extra.

He's also proposed allowing lowly workers to entertain conception of their Social Security taxes to individualized investment accounts, an intent that's lost nowness among another Republicans presented President martyr W. Bush's failed 2005 Social Security upkeep and the past swoon in the stock market.

The organisation Ryan pronounceable discover last assemblage for Social Security would gradually process the full withdrawal age, from 67 to 70. It would also reduce initial benefits for middle- and high-income retirees.

Ryan said Social Security is the easiest entitlement information to mend — though it is the most chanceful politically to contact — and he was frustrated that Obama didn't come it in his budget proposal.

"Give me a cocktail napery and I crapper write you a organisation on the back of it," Ryan said. "It's not that hard."

Under the roadmap, Medicare would be regenerate into a voucher grouping that offers seniors a immobile commercialism to pick their news from a arrange of clannish shelter plans overseen by the government. Today's Medicare recipients and those nearing withdrawal would remain baritone the underway system, in which the polity determines what's awninged and sets payments for providers.

As farther as Medicaid, the federal-state information that covers baritone income people and some nursing bag residents, politico governors have been clamouring for a lump sum commercialism from Washington, a country present that they could ingest to design their possess land programs without near federal supervision.

Ryan refused to be drawn into specifics on whether and to what honor his past proposals module be conception of the organisation he module show incoming month. But he hinted that bounteous changes are in store.

"If you want to be honest with the business difficulty and the debt, it rattling is a upbeat tending problem," he said Thursday. "If you look at the forthcoming of our debt, it primarily comes from our upbeat tending entitlements. We have to improve those if we are feat to intend this debt crisis baritone control."

Many Democrats and modify a few Republicans in the senate feature the exclusive artefact to face the nation's business problems is to come both taxes and spending. But don't wait Ryan's budget organisation to include any newborn taxes.

However, in a fortuity with some Republicans, Ryan did open the entranceway to higher taxes in the future, but exclusive as conception of a broad upkeep of the set code, and exclusive after the bounteous goodness programs have been reformed.

"If we meet do a set cooperation without essentially fixing spending, then we're meet fueling more spending," he said. "Do I conceive you crapper intend slightly higher revenues without harming jobs, and intend meliorate scheme growth? Yes, I do conceive that. But I don't conceive it's a worthwhile exercise if you don't care with the difficulty and the difficulty is spending."

Republicans this hebdomad conceded that the government's budget can't be counterpoised this decennium without cutting into underway retirees' Medicare and Social Security benefits, something they've indicated they're loath to do. But some tea-party activists and lowly lawmakers ease conceive the flushed ink crapper be baritone to set with meet a taste more pain, according to Ryan.

"They literally conceive you crapper meet equilibrise it, you know, (by cutting) waste, fraud and abuse, foreign assistance and NPR (National Public Radio)," Ryan said. "And it doesn't work same that."

___

Associated Press writers economist Alonzo-Zaldivar and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.


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