Over the next couple of months (and beyond that, if we’re lucky), we will be hearing a lot about the Paul Ryan plan. Formally known as the Path to Prosperity, the plan is intended to correct the certain-death spending of the federal government. You will hear all sorts of stuff about it, especially from the Obama campaign, and hear that it calls for increased taxes on the middle class, the deaths of millions of elderly, and a whole lot more we are neither exaggerating nor making up: these are actual claims made by politicians, and it is certain to get worse and lower.

Because this thing scares the Democrats. But what is actually in it? The entire plan as published provides a handy summation; the Czar is listing it for you here, but feel free to read the whole document—it’s shorter than you think.

1. Defense spending is cut by $178B, simply by accepting the proposals by Secretary Gates.
2. Elimination of hundreds of government programs.
3. Cessation of all taxpayer-funded private sector bailouts.
4. Lifting of moratoria on energy exploration and exploitation.
5. Creation of spending caps, budget process reforms, and sets limits on how much the government can spend and allocate.
6. Transference of Medicaid block grants to the states, rather than lump federal spending into an outrageously inefficient animal.
7. Welfare reform extended to all aspects of welfare, not just cash payments. It basically extends the helpful reforms of the 1990s to all areas of welfare, not just cash welfare.
8. Consolidation of numerous overlapping, redundant, and even competitive federal job training programs into a simplified system.
9. Creation of competitive Medicare programs to lower overall costs; this is limited only to new applicants under 55 years of age, which will free up enough money to expand coverage to the poor and those with pre-existing conditions, and still reduce total overall costs due to the inherent waste caused by lack of competition.
10. Reformation of social security; although the plan acknowledges that social security is mathematically certain to collapse within the lifespans of people already retired today, it offers no specific solution. Instead, the plan requires Congress to take a series of actions to reform the process as it best sees fit.
11. Elimination of all well-known tax loopholes, and consolidation of tax brackets (up to an including a flat tax), with no rate to exceed 25 percent.
12. Lowering of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

The plan offers more specifics than this, including listing individual reform steps, but those can get a little lengthy for a friendly listing here. Again, the Path is extremely well thought-out, and acknowledges that we can do even more if we want to.

You might even be surprised to read that it uses Democratic Party promises against the opposition: for example, Ryan quotes Roosevelt’s actual intent to phase out social security in place of a privatized system. Equally, he provides examples where similar measures enacted in the past (such as Reagan’s tax reform) prove the sanity of this proposal.

It is important to note—and Democrats will exclaim this loudly—that Ryan’s plan leaves a lot of debt and deficit spending in place…however, as the spreadsheets toward the back demonstrate, his plan stops the deficit spending and erodes the debt to a manageable level by 2021 (actually ten years from inception, since he wrote it in 2011).

Equally important to note is that because the Senate failed to pass this plan in 2011, the amount of debt and deficit means that even if this gets passed in 2013 under a President Romney, we probably won’t see a reduction until 2025, thanks to the added debt and deficit spending caused by our current administration. It will take time, but the best part is that it is merely a realistic start. As Americans get behind the plan over the next couple of months, who knows what else we can do.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.