Unlike the deficit commission's plan, Ryan's budget would produce almost all of its savings from unsustainable cuts to discretionary spending and Medicare and Medicaid programs, while doing little in the way of tax reform to promote economic growth and to better ensure we all pay our fair share.
Last month, Ryan and Alice Rivlin, the former Clinton budget director — both are members of Obama's deficit commission — introduced a plan, based on Ryan's Roadmap, that would fundamentally transform Medicare.
If the Republican Party had a brain it would give up on its debt-ceiling gambit and announce instead that it wants to open negotiations immediately with President Obama on the basis of his own deficit commission, the Simpson-Bowles plan.
I believed he should have accepted his own Simpson-Bowles deficit commission because it offered a plan to cut and tax that was at the scale of the problem and enjoyed at least some G.O.P. support, had the overwhelming backing of independents and even Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, now says she felt "fully ready to vote for that".
Last week, when the deficit commission declined to accept the Rivlin-Ryan plan — or to address health-care costs in more than a glancing manner — Ryan declared that he would vote against the commission's final report.
The deficit commission proposed a series of tax overhaul plans.
It is likely that the Rivlin-Ryan plan, rejected by the Obama deficit commission, will find its way into Ryan's budget next year.
So once the secret Congressional plan is passed to the White House, the deficit commission can unveil the thing as if it were the product of nonpolitical expertise.
One of the items that continuously comes up in reference to the budget deficit is President Obama's support for the plan put forward by the co-chairs of his deficit commission, Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson.
After they've come up with a debt-reduction plan, have them send it up in secret to the presidential deficit commission, which President Obama was smart enough to create.
