House Budget Committee Review of the Legislation as Enacted
Congressman Paul Ryan
Paul Ryan’s Notes
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4/7/2010
The Democratic health care legislation enacted last week will enlarge government, increase Federal spending, deficits, and debt, and create a dependence on the Federal Government at odds with America’s historic commitment to individual liberty and personal responsibility. It was muscled through Congress on a purely partisan vote, and through an unprecedented abuse of a specialized budget process intended to control the size of government, not expand it. The principal consequences of the legislation include:
– It initiates a government takeover of the health care sector (one-sixth of the U.S. economy), intrudes in the doctor-patient relationship, and increases total spending by $2.6 trillion.
– It raises taxes by more than a half-trillion dollars over the next 10 years – the largest tax increase in American history.
– It cuts more than a half-trillion dollars from Medicare to finance a new entitlement, and includes a series of additional gimmicks that hide the true cost of the legislation.
– It adds to an already unsustainable rate of government spending growth that will overwhelm the Federal budget and sacrifice the Nation’s future prosperity.
The U.S. health care sector clearly needs reform. But the legislation discussed here is not solely about health care. It really deals with what kind of country America will be in the 21st century: whether government will have a bigger role in making individuals’ deeply personal decisions about their medical care; whether Americans will come to depend more on the government than on themselves for their livelihoods; whether America declines into a culture of dependency, or rejuvenates itself as a culture of initiative, opportunity, and creativity – the principles on which the Nation was founded.
Click here to read the full House Budget Committee analysis from ranking member Paul Ryan. The report is eleven pages, printed in a PDF format, and can be downloaded.
