Post by bot on Mar 31, 2014 21:55:00 GMT -5
Questions For Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on His House Republican Budget
As House Republicans prepare to unveil their fiscal year 2015 budget tomorrow, all indications are that this year’s budget will be even more extreme than previous Republican budgets. This year, the Republican budget is expected to propose even deeper cuts to critical programs than in previous years – but those cuts still won’t be deep enough to reach Republicans’ unrealistic budget goals. As in past years, House Republicans will likely have to use gimmicks and magic asterisks to fill in the gaps. Here are the top 10 questions we hope reporters will ask Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan about his budget proposal:
1.Does your budget once again use a magic asterisk, representing hundreds of billions in spending cuts without any detail about which programs will be impacted or the amount of cuts each program will face?
2.Does the Republican budget invest in job creation, like House Democrats’ Make It In America plan, which strengthens our manufacturing sector to create jobs?
3.Where do Republicans find the additional $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction required to meet their goal of balance within 10 years?
4.Does the Republican budget really balance in 10 years, or does it rely on Affordable Care Act cost-saving reforms that it claims to repeal?
5.Is the remainder of the reckless sequester addressed, or does the Republican budget return to irresponsible sequester level spending next year?
6.Does this budget again include special tax breaks for oil companies and corporations that are moving jobs overseas rather than creating jobs here in the United States?
7.Is Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp’s tax reform plan incorporated into this year’s Republican budget, as it was last year? If not, why not?
8.As proposed in previous years, are you once again planning on converting many critical programs for our most vulnerable, such as food stamps and Medicaid, into state block grants with few federal controls?
9.Does the Republican budget require the debt limit to increase in March 2015?
10.Is this year’s House Republican budget, with its even more extreme budget cuts, really just a bad April Fools’ Day joke?
www.democraticwhip.gov/sites/default/files/Questions%20on%20Budget%203.31.14%20FINAL.pdf