The budget plan unveiled by House Republicans on Tuesday would balance the budget in ten years, but it also would allow for the budget to keep growing after two initial years of spending reductions in the discretionary budget.
"We believe we owe the American people a balanced budget," Ryan said at a news conference, as Republicans made clear that neither Senate Democrats nor the White House would be putting forth any plan that brought the yearly deficit down to zero.
As for how the Ryan budget deals with federal spending, it would "save" $4.6 trillion over ten years - in other words - it would reduce the level of increase built in to current budget law.
For many Republicans, that is not what they consider a "budget cut," but that is what the details show.
In terms of budget authority, here are the numbers on how the Ryan budget would stack up in coming years when compared to the pre-sequester spending caps set out in the Budget Control Act of 2011 (those caps are in parentheses):
2014 - $966.3 billion ($1.066 trillion)
2015 - $994.6 billion ($1.086 trillion)
2016 - $1.015 trillion ($1.107 trillion)
2017 - $1.040 trillion ($1.131 trillion)
2018 - $1.065 trillion ($1.156 trillion)
2019 - $1.092 trillion ($1.182 trillion)
2020 - $1.120 trillion ($1.208 trillion)
2021 - $1.147 trillion ($1.234 trillion)
The Ryan budget would spend almost $100 billion less next year than originally agreed to, in part from a further discretionary budget cut on top of automatic across the board budget cuts.
As you can also see, the Ryan budget would still increase over time, just like the spending caps in the Budget Control Act.
Ryan's discretionary budget next year would be a cut for 2014 from the current $984 billion (post-sequester) to $966.3 billion.
As we get the same numbers from Senate Democrats in their budget, we will compare and contrast the two plans.
We won't be able to do the same comparison for the budget from the White House, which officials acknowledged on Tuesday won't be presented to the Congress until the week of April 8, over two months behind schedule.
