Frederica Freyberg:
As the economy continues to sputter, President Obama’s budget proposal includes a rollback of the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans, financial incentives for the middle class and spending that our first guest says will “send our nation barreling down a path of unsustainable entitlement growth and crushing levels of taxes and debt.” Janesville Republican Paul Ryan is the ranking Republican member of the House budget committee. He says his roadmap for America's future is needed now. He joins us now on his cell phone, driving somewhere in his district.

Paul Ryan:
Good evening, good to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:
The president's plan does call for a spending freeze on some domestic programs and $20 billion cuts in unnecessary programs. Not enough?

Paul Ryan:
He's still adding $14 trillion to our national debt, tripling it over 10 years. The deficit never gets to sustainable levels under his own definitions. His own budget director said their budget is not credible. I'll use their words to describe it. What's concerning me, and you mentioned in your lead-in, we haven't put the Republican budget out yet because the budget isn't due until March. I put out a separate bill of my own suggesting how to get our spending, borrowing, and deficits under control while making sure we protect our seniors, that their lives aren’t disrupted but bring programs to solvency and pay off our national debt so we don’t send it on to our next generation, our children and our grandchildren. Where I take issue is what happened this week. The president brought us a budget that doubles our debt in five years, triples it in 10 — high deficits that never get within reason. And this before our entitlement programs begin to explode. And that's what I'm concerned about. We are bringing about a debt crisis in this country. If we can't show that we can get our spending and borrowing under control, it will hurt the American people. It will give us higher interest rates and crushing levels of taxation that will make it hard to get good jobs in this economy.

Frederica Freyberg:
Your roadmap has been described this way. You achieve a balanced budget by transforming Medicare into a voucher program with subsidies for the poor, needs testing for people with lower income and holding the growth of the voucher below the growth of healthcare costs. Is that accurate?

Paul Ryan:
Not exactly. It's close. You missed one thing. What my plan does is it actually guarantees Medicare for everybody over the age of 55 as it's currently constructed. It's different than the Democrats' proposal which is to take $500 billion out of Medicare now and put it into another health plan. I'm shoring up Medicare's finances so people who are on the program now and will be in the next ten years, rest assured it will be there for them. Because it's unsustainable going bankrupt before future generations will go on it. You have got to make the necessary changes. The proposal I’m proposing says, I'm familiar with my healthcare plan as a congressman. What I'm saying is let's have the future Medicare for younger people work exactly like the plan I have got in congress with additional support for the sick and poor and not as much support for the very wealthy people in society. Doing that according to the congressional budget office, solves the problem, pays off the debt and brings Medicare into permanent solvency. I think it's important that we go to Washington and try to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. So you are seeing lots of mis-characterizations. Lots of scare tactics. What I have done is offer a plan. The only one who has ever done this including the president that guarantees Medicare for people on the program now and going onto it in the next 10 years and makes it solvent and secure for future generations.

Frederica Freyberg:
You guarantee it and say it would remain solvent. But it would be a reduction of what people now have.

Paul Ryan:
No, it wouldn’t, it would continue to increase, actually, it just doesn't grow at as fast a rate as it otherwise would grow because Medicare itself overcomes the entire federal government. It literally outgrows the size of the government we have today. Any plan to bring solvency will lower its growth rate. There will always be more money in Medicare one year after the next. So it's not true that it will spend less money than we do now. It will spend more money every year there on after, it just won't grow as fast as it is scheduled to grow. And that's for people under the age of 55.

Frederica Freyberg:
What about privatizing social security? You say you are not calling for that.

Paul Ryan:
Correct. If I could just get you there. Privatizing it is giving people their money, letting them do with it what they want. I'm suggesting, let's guarantee social security for people who are in or near retirement, about 55, so they can count on it so they know it's there. Because we know it's going bankrupt and won't be there for future generations, let’s do the things we need to do to make it solvent. If we don't, there is a 24 percent cut across the board that’s already scheduled to occur in current law. I’m trying to prevent that. I'm saying, give people under the age of 55 the voluntary option. If they want the same system I have as a congressman, where the federal government runs it, it’s a personal account, managed by social security, not by the private firms, you can have that if you want it. So it's an option, not a mandatory decision. So it's not privatized. It's a personal account run by the government in your name, it's your property and you keep it. It's a good system. We want to give people the option to have the identical system. It helps people get more bang for their buck. My children are getting a negative 1 percent rates of return on their payroll taxes. Let's give younger people a chance to have a better retirement with a better rate of return on their taxes.

Frederica Freyberg:
I have to ask you with about 20 seconds left, what your reaction is to the vote in Congress to approve the $1.9 trillion in debt.

Paul Ryan:
It should have been coupled with serious budget restraint. I did not obviously support it because it's accompanied by a budget that makes the program much, much worse. It triples our debt. We’ve got to get this debt under control, and it will take both parties to work together to do it.

Frederica Freyberg:
Congressman Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.