by Tom Gallagher
Perhaps the most vocal anti-government deficit hawk in recent memory, Catholic U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican Party's budget guru, introduced new bills that would at almost $100 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
The first bills promoted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as the new chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee would add nearly $100 billion to the deficit over 10 years.Ryan, a deficit hawk during his time as the chairman of the Budget Committee for the previous six years, made his fame proposing budgets that aimed to dramatically cut domestic spending and balance the budget within a decade.
But in his first legislative act as head of the committee that will be central to expected tax reform efforts over the next two years, Ryan pushed through a package of seven tax cut bills that would add $93.5 billion to the deficit in the next decade.
.... Although Republicans generally require new expenses to be paid for by cuts elsewhere in the budget, they don't when it comes to tax cuts. As a result, none of the proposed measures came along with savings from another portion of the budget. Republicans also argued that the breaks in question have been enacted every year on a temporary basis -- without any "pay-for" -- and it only makes sense to make the measures permanent.
"We all know that our businesses need certainty to grow," Ryan said. “If these things have been in the [tax] code for a long time, and they’re important provisions, then let’s just keep them in the code."
