Paul Ryan has come out with another Underpants Gnomes budget; short on specifics, long on assumptions. Ezra Klein writes,
Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There’s a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets — 10 percent and 25 percent — and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
But the real point of Ryan’s budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. It turns Medicare into a voucher program, turns Medicaid, food stamps, and a host of other programs for the poor into block grants managed by the states, shrinks the federal role on priorities like infrastructure and education to a tiny fraction of its current level, and envisions an entirely new tax code that will do much less to encourage home buying and health insurance.
Ryan’s budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan’s real point throughout his career.
Same old, same old.
See also Ed Kilgore “Ryan’s Latest Bait-and-Switch“; Eugene Robinson, “Paul Ryan’s Make-Believe Budget.”
Fish, gotta swim.
Ratfeckr’s, gotta feck rats.
And soul-less, vacant-eyed, Granny-starvers, gotta soul-lessly, vacant eye-edly, starve them some Grannies!
“Come and try’The New Paul Ryan Plan!’
Yes, NEW!
More Paulier, and even more Ryanier, than the one who ran along with… Oh, WHAT is his name. Gloved Rimjob? Damn, I hate it when I can’t remember the names of bad Republican candidates, like, John Mc… Mc… something or other.”
Now, will the MSM notice that “The New Paul Ryan” still knows math about as well as the ‘Old Paul Ryan Plan?’
Which means… uhm… NOT AT ALL!!!
And that Ryan’s “New Math” looks a lot like his “Old Meth.”
Ryan’s “New Math†looks a lot like his “Old Meth.â€
Good one.
Anyone besides me remember the spanking that Grampa Joe gave Eddie Munster last fall in their debate? “Hello, 911? An old man is beating a child on my TV.”– Bill Maher.
So this defective parrot, and Bobby “Kenneth the page” Jindal, and Marco “Quiero mas agua” Rubio, these guys are the rising young stars of the GOP? Well, they’ll provide job security for the good folks at Comedy Central, anyway.
In 1945, there were 24 tax brackets and the top tier paid 94%.
The Ryan plan proposes moving from six brackets to two bracket which allows the very rich to hide among the middle class and pay at the same rate as people who work for a living. Considering that the general perception is that the rich don’t pay their share – the democratic proposals should emphasize more brackets and the ultra rich paying say half of the rate in 1945 – 46%. That will put a dent in the deficit and the fat cats still won’t miss any meals.
I don’t know if it will interest you all, but I have a British rightwing friend (he’s a good guy, even if his politics are caveman) and when it comes to finance, he’s sure that the solution is to end “all that foreign aid” that is supposedly breaking the UK’s budget. Of course, he never bothered to look up just how much Britain gives away in foreign aid. So I did.
In 2011, at £8.57 billion British aid spending was 0.56% of GNI (gross national income) – far greater than the US equivalent of 0.20%. For the UK taxpayer, with a population of about 62.6 million, it works out at roughly £137 per head.
OK, that’s a chunk of money, but still a small percentage of total spending. And perhaps even much of it is wasted. But hidden in the figures is the fact that almost all the money goes to British companies that are contracted to provide whatever is being done with that aid. That is true in the USA too – foreign aid is often a disguised subsidy to Halliburton. Indeed, in the USA much “foreign aid” is actually military aid.
I don’t know what Ryan would do with the meager amount of foreign aid that the USA donates, but I suspect that corporate lobbyists will make sure that the lion’s share goes to them.
And the TV reporters of the MSM continut to discuss Ryan as a budget wonk, and as a proposer of serious ideas. Facts just don’t seem to matter much anymore.
Funny, I coulda sworn we already decided about all this stuff.
Did I just dream that whole thing where there were all these folks on TV, and two white guys, one kinda like Thurston Howell, versus a black guy and his funny old Irish sidekick?
Was that a movie? I know I’ve been working hard and not getting enough sleep, but still. That wasn’t just a movie, right? Didn’t we all just have a big vote, and decide we’d let the black guy and his sidekick do their plan? Not the rich white guy and his smarmy assistant?
We just did this. Why are we talking about this again?
Most important, our budget will reignite the American Dream, the idea that anyone can make it in this country.
It’s the idea of the American dream that is the narcotic that keeps us in bondage. Paulie should just propose selling national lottery tickets. That way there’ll alway be false hope to surface among the millions upon millions of losers. What does “make it” mean?
Doug …Astute and informative comment. It’s comment like that that more people should be aware of… Paulie is a beady eyed wharf rat.
Citizen Ryan is quite the egalitarian when it comes to burden, but not so when it comes to benefit.
We’re not getting through that Social Security is solvent – I had a 27 year old say that he doesn’t expect to collect just yesterday. This needs to change.