U.S. House Republicans, while unveiling a budget plan Tuesday with $6 trillion in proposed spending cuts, claimed the president's own proposal would accelerate a "descent into a debt crisis."
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for "punting" on the issue of debt reduction in his administration's budget, which was released in February.
Ryan declined to propose specific changes to Social Security but asked the president submit a plan of his own.
Ryan and his fellow Republicans, in their first comprehensive budget proposal since taking control of the House of Representatives in January, emphasized the danger unsustainable entitlement programs posed to the country's economic stability. Their budget, which seeks to defund the healthcare reform law signed in March 2010, has little chance of making it through the Democrat-controlled Senate and reaching Obama's desk.
The Republican's budget would cut Medicare and Medicaid, lower taxes and aim to reduce the nation's deficit to $995 billion next year, from $1.4 trillion this year. The plan would slash spending by $6.2 billion over the next decade and reduce federal debt by $4.4 trillion compared with the president's budget but doesn't offer a road map to deal with soaring retirement obligations.
Social Security this year will pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the first time since 1983, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in October.
"We thought that if we put one out there, it would just be too tempting for the Democrats to attack and that will set us away from actually coming together to talk about this," Ryan said at the American Enterprise Institute about an hour after unveiling the budget proposal to reporters at the Capitol.
"When the trustees certify that there's a problem in Social Security — which there is — that requires submission of plans to come to the table with fast-track procedures in Congress to act on it."
Ryan proposed a "trigger" that would require the president to offer a way to balance the retirement fund, as well as mandate congressional leaders to "put forward their best ideas," in the event the program, created in 1935, is deemed unsustainable. Ryan called the program "insolvent."
The Obama administration's budget proposal didn't offer structural reforms for Social Security either. It said that while the program "does not face an immediate crisis and is not driving our short-term deficits or long-term debt, it does face a long-term financing shortfall."
House Democrats criticized the GOP budget proposal for protecting tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of education investment and healthcare spending.
"The Republican budget takes a lopsided approach," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement.
Ryan warned the country was in danger of surging borrowing costs, soaring taxes and a potential economic collapse if lawmakers don't come together to reduce the country's debt levels.
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