Ryan Budget Debate Takes New Turn After Republican Takeover

"The Ryan budget." Them's fightin' words. Democrats have long railed against the Republican blueprint by Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate, but they never really had to worry about stopping it. They may have to take it a little more seriously, now that Republicans have won control of the U.S. Senate and still hold the House. But if they play their cards better than they did in this year's midterm elections, this may just give them a renewed line of attack for 2016.

The House keeps passing Ryan budgets each year but so long as Democrats controlled the Senate, the proposals never really stood a chance of implementation, or debate, or even headline-grabbing veto threats. The last version of the plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin passed in April. It advocated about $5 trillion in federal spending cuts over a decade by revamping and constraining the growth of Medicare, and cutting healthcare, food stamps, education and farm spending. While Americans like concepts such as fiscal responsibility, polls since 2012 suggested there could be a backlash to aspects of Ryan's plans, especially to fiddling with Medicare.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in an interview Friday that when budget season rolls around early next year, "it's kind of hard for Republicans in Congress to turn to their voters and say, 'You know that Ryan Republican budget we always pushed for? We weren't really serious.' So I think there will be tremendous pressure for Republicans to pass a virtually identical version, and with Republicans in control of the Senate it's hard to see how they duck that issue. Bottom line is, they're now firing with real budget bullets and I do believe their budget does great harm to lots of people in this country. It's going to be a wake-up call to the public."