Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan proposed Tuesday to eliminate the annual deficit by 2023, in large part by cutting projected spending growth over the next decade by roughly $5 trillion.

The plan, which contains many of the same provisions he offered last year, hits all the GOP high notes: less spending, lower tax rates and a rejection of most of President Obama's health reforms.

Ryan's proposal represents the start of a months-long process on Capitol Hill aimed at enacting a budget for the 2014 fiscal year, which begins in October.

On Wednesday, Democratic Senate Budget Chairman Patty Murray will put out her own 2014 proposal that is expected to contrast sharply with Ryan's.

But the two sides are likely to view each other's budget proposal as dead on arrival.

While Democrats and Republicans have called a truce in their fight over this year's budget, vowing to work to avoid a government shutdown later this month, they remain sharply divided over broad fiscal policy for 2014 and beyond.

Still, their plans set the boundaries as lawmakers try to negotiate some kind of middle ground.

Here are the main provisions of Ryan's budget proposal.

BALANCED BUDGET

Ryan's proposal doesn't detail all of the assumptions he makes about certain variables like economic growth or when some of his proposals would go into effect. So it's hard to know exactly how he so quickly and steeply cuts deficits.

But lower spending and a revenue windfall from the fiscal cliff deal brokered over New Year's are key drivers.

His plan would leave the country's accrued debt at just under 55% of gross domestic product by the end of the decade, according to Ryan's estimates. That's well below the 77% projected by the Congressional Budget Office under current law.

It should be noted that CBO won't analyze Ryan's -- or Murray's -- budget resolution since each simply proposes targets for taxes and spending and does not detail legislative changes for hitting those targets.

SPENDING

Broad reductions: Ryan estimates that his proposals will grow spending at an average rate of 3.4% a year, rather than the 5% projected.

In 2014, his plan calls for $3.53 trillion in spending -- a little less than the $3.62 trillion projected by the CBO

By 2023, however, spending under the Ryan plan would fall about $985 billion below the level the CBO has projected for that year.

His budget calls for discretionary spending levels that are lower than what CBO assumes. That's partly because Ryan does not include emergency spending on disasters like Hurricane Sandy. He would also reduce transportation spending, noted Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

And he would extend the lower caps on discretionary spending set by the 2011 Budget Control Act for two more years through 2023. It's not clear how much extra savings he derives from doing that, since the CBO assumes that spending levels after 2021 only grow by inflation thereafter, in essence preserving sequester-level spending, according to Goldwein.

Reform Medicare, preserve cuts: As Ryan did last year, he is proposing the creation of a Medicare premium support system starting in 2024. That means those 55 and older would not be affected.

Future seniors could choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare and the premium support system, which would offer them a fixed amount of money to buy private health insurance.

The premium support payment, which would be established through competitive bidding, would grow at a rate equal to economic growth plus 0.5 percentage points.

Such a system would limit federal spending on Medicare, whereas today there is no cap on what the government pays.

Ryan also wants to repeal major elements of Obama's health reform law, a move that would cut spending by an estimated $1.8 trillion. That's largely because he would repeal the new subsidies for Americans who buy their insurance on exchanges and he would repeal the expansion of Medicaid.

But Ryan wouldn't repeal all parts of the law. He has said that he would preserve the law's spending cuts to Medicare, saving more than $700 billion. But instead of using those savings to fund insurance subsidies he would apply them to deficit reduction.