Lawmakers are now refocusing to the budget debate, with Joe Biden hosting representatives from the Democratic and Republican parties at Blair House yesterday. While it was out of the headlines, Republican uneasiness with their party’s deficit plan, Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, seems to have grown, and now many are abandoning at least parts of it, particularly Medicare. While only Sen. Susan Collins has expressed outright opposition to Ryan’s Medicare reforms, Sens. Lamar Alexander and Rob Portman, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and others have refused to give it their outright support. There were rumors Republican leadership was planning on abandoning the reforms entirely, with Paul Ryan saying he is under “no illusion” about its chances of success, but at last check, John Boehner said they stand by the plan.
Why are people abandoning it? Ryan's budget wreaks havoc on the middle class and the social safety net, taking 34 million Americans off health insurance and scaling back Pell grants by 45 percent. It does these things without a credible way to balance the budget or reducing the deficit in a meaningful way.
Demos, where I work and which has a publishing relationship with the Prospect, has a report and chart explaining how the competing budget plans shape up. Unsurprisingly, Ryan's is the worst.
The scorecard shows that what separates the plans that lawmakers are currently debating is whether they take present day economic and social issues into account or whether they are simply driven by ideology. There are ways to deal with our high unemployment and stagnating growth while preserving the programs Americans value, and still balance the budget, but whether leaders choose to adopt them will come down to political will.