Ryan confirms House GOP will present 2013 budget

The Hill ^ | 01/20/12 04:59 PM ET | Molly K. Hooper and Erik Wasson

[Hunton Peck]

BALTIMORE — Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) confirmed Friday that House Republicans will move a budget resolution this year.

Ryan’s comments appear to put to rest speculation that the House GOP would put the onus on the Senate to act first and defer until the upper chamber moves a budget, which is seen as very unlikely.

Last year the House passed a bold budget that reined in Medicare spending only to see the Senate fail to move a budget at all.

House Republicans took a political beating for the budget, as attack ads from Democrats blossomed accusing the GOP of ending Medicare.

The Ryan 2012 budget would have kept Medicare for current seniors but transitioned future seniors to a new system in which they would purchase private insurance instead. Under that plan, the government would give seniors some money to cover part of the premiums.

"We are doing a budget this year," Ryan told reporters on Friday afternoon at a press conference on the second day of a three-day House Republican retreat in Baltimore.

Ryan would not offer any specifics of what would be included in the policy blueprint but noted that his colleagues wanted to embrace "bold" deficit-reducing measures in the document.

Asked if the yet-to-be-written budget will include the controversial "premium support" Medicare model, Ryan said his colleagues were not backing away from it.

"We haven't written [the budget] yet but we're not backing off on the kinds of reform we've advocated,” Ryan said.

Ryan in December also proposed a modified version of his premium support plan along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) That version would keep traditional Medicare as an option. It remains unclear if Ryan-Wyden will be in the 2013 budget instead of the original Ryan plan.

This week, Bob Bixby of The Concord Coalition had speculated that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would opt to pass on doing a budget this year.

“He could say we have passed a budget, we stick by it but now it is the Senate’s turn,” Bixby said. He said the Senate’s failure to write a budget last year was deeply troubling and the House GOP could call attention to that while at the same time avoid risking a fresh round of Medicare attack ads from Democrats.

He acknowledge though that for the House GOP caucus, the vote on Ryan budget was a unifying moment in the midst of several divisive spending votes.

President Obama will kick off the 2013 budget and appropriations process in early February when he releases his own budget proposal.

[Hunton Peck]

In response to this article, Ryan just tweeted:

Following law & proposing a budget is apparently news: http://ow.ly/8B6qv -a revealing indictment on @SenateDems & #1000Days w/ no budget

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Hunton Peck.

[newzjunkey]

Good. Then the do-nothing Dem Senate can go another year without passing a budget.