Appearing on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report this evening, House Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained how Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care will saddle small businesses with crushing mandates and punitive new taxes, increase rather than decrease health expenditures over time, and add at least a $1.3 trillion burden on the American middle class over the next ten years.

Rep. Ryan said:

If you use Christina Romer’s multiplier, her economic model - the Obama Administrator’s Economic model, [Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover of Health Care]  will cost us 5.5 million jobs.  A surtax on small businesses, bringing the small tax rate to 45 percent in Wisconsin, that top tax rate is 54.27 percent.  If you take a look at the 8 percent payroll tax on all those employers who are going to shift their employees into the public plan, I would say 23 percent payroll tax on those workers and those firms.

Outside actuaries are telling us from 50 to 66 percent of employers are going to dump their people into the exchange.  That means that many employers with a 23 percent payroll tax on their employee, a 45 percent federal top tax rate on small businesses, and we’re going to do this in the middle of a recession when we have 10.2 percent unemployment?  Technically, we’re probably out of this recession, but this is a sure fire way of getting us back into one.

Health care reform should help small businesses and families tackle the problem of rising costs. Small businesses are the engines of job growth in America, creating between 60-80 percent of new jobs in our economy, and health reform that reduces costs for employers will foster job growth. A Washington takeover of health care will achieve neither objective.

House Republicans have a common-sense, responsible solution our nation and small businesses can afford. The GOP alternative recognizes that health care reform should be market-driven, preserve the relationship between doctors and patients, and reduce health care costs for small businesses struggling to keep their doors open.

To read a side-by-side comparison of the House Republican alternative to the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care, click HERE.  To learn more about the Republican plan, visit HealthCare.GOP.gov.