The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune:
The talk is too often restricted to "shared sacrifice." This sets up a debate where we are really just arguing over whom to hurt and how best to manage the decline of our nation. It is a framework that accepts permanently higher taxes and bureaucratically determined access to health care as givens.
A better name for this approach is "shared scarcity." It represents a deeply pessimistic vision for the future of this country — one that would lead us to a diminished future.
The House-passed budget — "The Path to Prosperity" — offers an alternative vision. It is rooted in the recognition that spending discipline and economic growth are the keys to balancing the federal budget.
More:
There is widespread, bipartisan agreement that the open-ended, fee-for-service structure of Medicare is a key driver of health-care cost inflation. Medicare is not the train being pulled along by the engine of rising costs. Medicare is the engine — and the rest of us are getting taken for a ride.
The disagreement isn't really about the problem — it's about the solution to controlling costs. Our budget would achieve this by letting seniors act as value-conscious consumers in a transparent and competitive market. Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient health care providers. The Obama plan is to give government the power to deny health care to seniors.
Link via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook.