Just as the dust begins to settle around a short-term budget that will trim billions of dollars of spending, Congress is turning its eyes to a larger mountain to chip down.
Speaker of the House John Boehner rekindled the debate over the fiscal 2012 budget with an op-ed in Monday’s USA Today, where he said the next fight will be over trillions of dollars, not billions.
Boehner writes that the compromise on the fiscal 2011 budget will save the country “hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decade,” but also that “the agreement is far from perfect, and we need to do much more if we're serious about creating new jobs, fixing our spending-driven debt crisis, and ending the uncertainty that continues to plague our economy.”
The solution, Boehner says, is House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity.”
“The Path to Prosperity is a powerful blueprint for economic growth and fiscal responsibility that will help our economy get back to creating jobs, stop Washington from spending money we don't have, and lift the crushing burden of debt that threatens our children and grandchildren,” he wrote.
Boehner praises Ryan’s proposed budget, saying, “It leads where the administration has failed and takes on autopilot spending that's driving our debt crisis while preserving critical health and retirement security programs for the future; expands American energy production to create jobs and address rising gas prices; repeals and defunds the health care law that threatens jobs; and much more.”
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