[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwv5EbxXSmE]
–Paul Ryan rolls out his 2012 budget + entitlement reform + tax reform package today with a Journal op-ed, press conference and midday speech at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s billing it as a “path to prosperity,” and citing some mighty, um, optimistic numbers from the conservative Heritage Foundation:
A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage’s analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.
–The Beltway crowd and David Brooks are ecstatic. “It’s also completely, almost gleefully, unacceptable to Democrats,” says Ezra Klein.
–Treasury Secretary Geithner tells Congress the federal government will brush up against the borrowing ceiling on May 16 and that, this time, his projections are not “likely to change in a way that would give Congress more time in which to act.”
–Democrats and Republicans need to reach a deal today on the 2011 budget deal or the government will shut down on Friday night. Sort of. There would be minimal impact (and an additional 48 hours to negotiate) if the government shuts down over the weekend and is open again by Monday. Republicans have prepared a one-week funding extension with more cuts that could provide additional breathing room. It’s true than many lawmakers have sworn off another short-term resolution, but quite a few, including Senate Majority Leader Reid, said something similar before the last one passed. Nonetheless, federal agencies are preparing for the worst.
–Both sides are engaging in brinkmanship: Speaker Boehner is insisting the latest number floated, $33 billion in cuts between now and the end of September, is insufficient. Senate Democrats are sticking to that figure and goading Boehner by telling anyone who will listen that the only thing preventing a deal is pressure from the Speaker’s right flank.
—The truth of GE’s tax bill is a bit more complicated than the Times made out, but it doesn’t change the fact that they pay few taxes in a swiss cheese system that leaks revenue.
–And fun fact from the Fed’s court-mandated document dump: its discount window lent to Libyan banks during the financial crisis.