GOP Unites To Pass Paul Ryan's Budget

UPDATE: By a vote of 235-193, the House passed Ryan’s plan on Friday afternoon. Only four Republicans — Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Ron Paul (R-Texas). Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) and freshman David McKinley (R-W.Va.) — voted against it…

The House of Representatives will vote this afternoon on a 2012 budget proposal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that aims to shred spending by nearly $6 trillion in the next twelve years.

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, released details of his “Path to Prosperity” last week. It trims the deficit by $4.4 trillion by rolling back non-defense spending to 2008 levels, capping federal spending at under 20% of GDP and carving about $78 billion worth of waste out of the Pentagon’s budget over the next five years.

However, the plan will likely fail to attract any Democratic votes due to the fact that it proposes privatizing Medicare and transforms Medicaid into a block grant. Moreover, it does almost nothing to boost tax revenue, which most independent analysts say must be part of the solution. And it fails to actually balance the budget until 2037. Yet despite that, the plan should pass out of the lower chamber.

Before the Ryan plan is voted on, the House will also vote on a Democratic alternative, crafted by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the top Democrat on Ryan’s committee. The measure freezes non-defense spending for five years, cuts the Pentagon’s budget by $89 billion over the next decade and sunsets funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of 2014. It also ends the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 per year. Democrats say the plan would balance the budget by 2018.

In addition, the House will vote on a budget released by the conservative Republican Study Committee, which proposes cutting spending by $9 trillion over the next decade. Both the Democratic plan and the RSC plan are expected to fail.

Once the Ryan plan passes today, Republicans will immediately begin preparing for negotiations with the White House, set to begin when Congress returns from its Easter recess in two weeks. Earlier this week, President Obama said that he would not accept the current GOP plan, opting instead to endorse a plan put forth last December by his fiscal commission, which freezes spending, ends tax cuts for the wealthy and otherwise reforms the tax code.

This story was updated at 2:20 pm.