House passage of the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Thursday, will go a long way toward helping Republicans forget about the disagreements within the party over budget issues during the past few months, according to
The Hill. The Ryan budget would cut $5.3 trillion in spending from President Barack Obama’s budget proposal.
The House approved the measure Thursday by a near party-line 228-191 vote, The Associated Press reported.
Approval of Budget Committee Chairman Ryan’s program will allow Republicans to rally around the issue of slashing the deficit, The Hill reports. And it could erase last year’s discord over raising the debt ceiling and extending the payroll tax. In this way, the GOP could return to its themes of less government and a strong economy for this year’s elections, according to The Hill.
Most members of the conservative Republican Study Committee promised to support the Ryan plan, even though they introduced their own version, with an additional $2.2 trillion in spending cuts, which was rejected by the House earlier Thursday.
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that Ryan’s proposal offers a preview of how Republicans would like to govern. "So I applaud my colleagues [who worked on the Ryan budget] for the tough decisions they've made, ... to lay out a real vision of what we were to do if we get more control here in this town. It's still a Democrat-run town."
The $3.5 trillion budget would revamp Medicare, slice everything from food stamps to transportation, and reject Obama's call for higher taxes on the rich, the AP reports. It envisions collapsing the six different income tax rates into just two, with a top rate of 25 percent compared with today's 35 percent. It would also eliminate unspecified tax breaks.
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