Rep. Paul Ryan Has a Better Idea on How to Fix What Ails the U.S.

Tonight, January 27, Pres. Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to a Joint Session of Congress. While the Constitution mandates that the Executive report to Congress on an annual basis, the tradition of doing so in person is a relatively new one. However, in this case, Pres. Obama might just want to mail it in, like many of his predecessors did.

Word on the street is that the president, following his battlefield conversion in Massachusetts last week, will make small business the tall pole in his economic recovery tent. He'll propose a combination of small business tax credits in an attempt to spur the economy. But this is just nibbling around the edges of a very large cracker-the collapse of the U.S. economy as we've known it for the last 60 years. See our January 26 post.

Paul Ryan is a member of Congress from Wisconsin. He is the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. He's taken the opportunity of tonight's State of the Union address to propose what he calls a "road map for America's future." While Pres. Obama may nibble around the edges of the problem, Rep. Ryan is a lot bolder. His plan is built on good old Midwestern common sense and American values. Writing in today's Wall Street Journal he lists the elements of his roadmap:

• Healthcare. We've spent 8 months in a bruising, partisan battle over the shape of healthcare reform. The result: A conservative-liberal stalemate. How about we try this: Provide universal access to health insurance by making the tax code fairer  to allow all Americans, either through their employer or on their own, to purchase insurance, even if those policies are written in another state. Provide supplemental payments to the poor so that they can find top-notch healthcare, rather than being consigned to the nether world of Medicaid coverage. Make insurance truly portable so it stays with the insured, not the company, and create high risk pools to make sure people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance without knocking out the concept of risk management, which keeps insurers solvent. The goal: Put Americans back in charge of their health, not insurance companies or government bureaucrats.
• Medicare. Preserve the system as is for older patients (55+), but create a Medicare payment for the younger ones to let them purchase their own Medicare-eligible plan. Also, fully fund Medical Savings Accounts for lower income patients. 
• Social Security. As with Medicare, keep the system intact for those workers who have paid into the system their whole lives and have an expectation of benefits in retirement. But allow workers younger than 55 to invest a third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plans that federal workers currently enjoy. These plans are guaranteed to not lose money. Most important, make these savings plans personal property so that when the beneficiary passes on, his heirs can inherit the asset. 
• Tax Reform. Reduce today's thousand-page tax code to two income brackets: 10% for joint returns up to $100,000 in income ($50,000 for individual filers), and 25% on taxable income above that amount. Period. The plan would preserve the standard deduction and personal exemption but would eliminate tax loopholes, deductions, credits, exclusions (except the healthcare tax credit), and nearly the entire tax preparation industry (which the current administration is attempting to tax with its harebrained tax prep licensing program)

There is a lot more to the Ryan Roadmap but you can see it for yourself online. Pres. Obama tonight will nibble at the problem in an attempt to re-engage the independent voters who elected him, while at the same time trying not to alienate the leftist/socialist cabal who created him. Delicate balance, and too little, too late. America's economy needs real, significant reforming, and Paul Ryan just might be the guy to do it.

Just thought you might like to know.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) addresses the House of Representatives on the looming pitfalls of the Obama 
healthcare plan.