Paul Ryan: 'Paul Ryan & Chris Van Hollen Advance Bipartisan Budget Reform'

Source:U.S. Representative Paul Ryan (Republican, Wisconsin) and U.S. Representative Chis Van Hollen (Democrat, Maryland) the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee.

"In a bipartisan effort, leaders from the House Budget Committee introduced the Expedited Line-Item Veto and Rescissions Act earlier today. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., joined MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss this effort to target wasteful Washington spending." 

From Paul Ryan

Is the line-item Veto the silver bullet to fixing our debt and deficit issues? Of course not, even if we were able to eliminate all Congressional earmarks because those earmarks only in Washington would 20B$ be only but compared with a Federal budget of 3.7T$. 20B$. Only in Washington in the larger scheme of things, does 20 billion dollars a year qualify as only. (Imagine if members of Congress had to work for a living) 

But what the line-item veto does is help with our debt and deficit because it could eliminate up to 20B$ a year in wasteful spending. And thats just in the Federal budget alone, Congress appropriates all the time out in emergency. They'll appropriate under in emergency just because they don't feel like paying for things. 

And what a Line Item Veto would do is empower the President, whoever the President is to eliminate things from spending bills that are wasteful and have nothing to do with the spending bill that it's attached to. 

A line-item veto is not good enough, we also need earmark reform as well, getting rid of earmarks that have nothing to do with the bills that are attached to. 

As well as earmark disclosure, meaning a member of Congress that authors an earmark, their name would be on the earmark that they are offering and where the earmark is going and what it's for. 

Along with forcing all earmarks to come under the PAGO policy including in emergency bills. Meaning that all earmarks would have to be paid for. These things alone could save the Federal Government and taxpayers 20B$ a year. 

Glad to see Representative Ryan and Representative Van Hollen (Chairman and Ranking Member of the Budget Committee) working together. Hopefully their roles will be reversed in the next Congress, which is a different debate. Actually, working together on something because they've already proven that they are great at taking the opposite position. So to see them actually work together, shows that there's hope for bi partisanship in Congress and that it isn't dead yet.