Roadmap For America's Future

Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has been in office for six terms now. Back in 2008, this ranking member of the House Budget and Ways and Means Committees released a bold and comprehensive plan on how to overhaul our nation's unsustainable welfare state and begin to pay off the national debt. The plan was ignored or laughed at back then. Now, as America's economy continues to struggle and as our national debt increases exponentially, this plan is now starting to get some well-deserved attention.

This ambitious plan is called the "Roadmap for America's Future" and is presidential in its scope. (Ryan insists that he does not want to nor will he run for the presidency, by the way.) Ryan's hope is that perhaps some Republican presidential aspirant will adopt the plan and run with it, as it is highly unlikely that the current congressional leadership and president will have anything to do with it.

The plan is 95 pages long and can be found at http://www.americanroadmap.org/ .

Ryan's bold plan would fundamentally restructure Medicare and Medicaid via means-tested vouchers for all citizens under the age of 55. It also introduces an "opt-in" option for personal accounts to Social Security. No changes would take place for those that are 55 and older.

Ryan's plan would further replace the corporate income tax with a business consumption tax. It would repeal the Alternative Minimum, dividend, capital gains, and estate taxes also. The plan also calls for taking our current six tax brackets and reducing them to just two. One would be at 10% and the other at 25%.

Some of the other proposals in the plan, of which I am a little more uncertain regarding some of the specific items, include things such as a jobs training program, budgetary reforms, and a free-market health care plan that is modeled on Congressman Ryan's Patients Choice Act. The good news is that the plan "solves our fiscal crisis. It turns it around," according to Ryan, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is in agreement with him.

Many folks will be upset by the means testing introduced in the plan, and the left will scream about how this cuts Medicare entitlements but in light of the fact that our national debt will shortly be the death knell for America if we continue down this current path, other options seem ethereal at best.

As Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid take up a huge percentage of federal expenditures, this plan seems well poised to solve this problem. Again, the current entitlement system is preserved for those over the age of 55 so those folks would not be adversely affected by this plan's implementation.

The plan is not perfect, but it does address the major causes of our debt and provides concrete proposals in how to reverse the current nation-ending path down which we are currently heading. It will be somewhat painful, but that is to be expected considering the foolishness with which we the people have allowed our government to run and spend over the last few generations.

Congressman Ryan has put forth a viable plan with his Roadmap For America's Future. It deserves the attention it is now starting to get. This may be the way we save our country from insolvency. Regardless, Congressman Ryan is to be commended for his efforts.