A real split is developing between fiscal conservative groups and Congressional Republicans as Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget “roadmap” gets more attention.
GOP leaders in the House have said again and again that even though Ryan is their chief budget writer and he’ll be the one to offer their alternative spending plan this spring, what he produced showing massive Social Security and Medicare cuts is not their official plan.
But we keep talking to conservatives who are asking in earnest, Why not?
Adding to the Club for Growth and top McCain economic adviser we wrote about earlier, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform is a “big supporter” of the Ryan roadmap.
“What’s not to like here?” Ryan Ellis, tax policy director for Americans for Tax Reform told TPMDC, citing large tax and spending cuts.
He says in Ryan’s defense:
It’s important to note that the Roadmap plan is unique. Nobody in either party (least of all the Obama Administration, which has no plan beyond the next decade) has put forward a comprehensive, pan-governmental reform bill like this. It reforms the tax system, budgeting, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you continued this plan long enough, it would even pay off the national debt. It does it all.
Ellis said Democratic arguments about the Social Security cuts in the plan are “over the top.”
“Getting a quarterly 401(k) style statement from the Social Security Administration is hardly turning Grandma’s pension check over to Bernie Madoff,” Ellis said. “As reforms go, it should be no more radical than your 401(k) at work or your Roth IRA.”
Both Ellis and Holtz-Eakin argued for a real debate on how to reform entitlement spending, an issue that has long been a political football in Washington.
