Exclusive: GOP Budget Called 'The Path to Prosperity'
April 4, 2011— -- ABC News has learned the long-awaited budget to be released this week by Republican budget chairman Paul Ryan will be called "The Path to Prosperity."
It's a path paved with deep cuts in spending and significant changes to entitlement programs.
And it's a proposal that will dominate political debate in Congress for the rest of the year.
Ryan said on Fox News Sunday that his budget will cut federal government spending by more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years – cutting the deficit even more than the plan put forward by the debt commission appointed by President Obama.
Ryan's budget will set the agenda for the Republican House on the critical issues of deficit reduction, entitlement reform and spending cuts.
It will also be target No. 1 for Democrats who will say Ryan's plan would destroy Medicare and impose devastating spending cuts that would kill the economic recovery.
"Yes, we will be giving our political adversaries things to use against us in the next election and shame on them if they do that," Ryan said.
They will.
For that reason, some top Republican leaders had urged Ryan to refrain from putting out a comprehensive plan until the President made the first move on entitlement reform.
But Ryan, with the strong backing of many of the 87 newly elected House GOP freshman who had won election by promising to cut spending and get the budget back in balance, argued that Republicans have a moral imperative to tackle the issue now.
"We are giving them a political weapon to go against us, but they will have to lie and demagogue to make that a weapon," Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. "They are going to demagogue us and it is that demagoguery that has always prevented political leaders in the past from actually fixing the problems. We can't keep kicking this can down the road. The President has punted; we're not going to follow suit."
The details of Ryan's plan won't be released until Tuesday. But he has said it will transform Medicaid by making it into a program that gives block grants to states.
