The budget plan put forth by Ryan is the work of a genius, a truly evil one. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing Ryan’s plan, under the benevolent guise of fiscal responsibility, attacks the poor and weak to the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. It provides immediate benefit to the rich at the long term detriment of everyone else and it does so in a language that sounds reasonable to many. Pure, evil genius.
Before I go further I must give credit to a couple of articles that made me see what Ryan is really doing here. The first explains, better then I can in the following, how Ryan plans to kill Medicare while getting seniors to support, or at least not fight it. The second explains how Ryan’s plan will provide huge tax cuts for the wealthy now while shifting the burden to the rest of us down the road. Highly recommended reading; http://www.npr.org/... and http://www.bloomberg.com/....
To see the evil beauty of his plan first we need to look at its immediate appeal to a couple critical constituencies, the elderly and the wealthy & powerful.
The elderly made up over 34% of the electorate in 2010 and they will come out strong against anything that threatens their Medicare. Accordingly Ryan’s plan will protect Medicare as it is for everyone over 55. The elderly are protected and the wealthy won’t have to worry about funding Medicare in the future. Genius.
The wealthy would see near immediate cuts in their top tax rates from 35% to 25%. This would be offset a later time by the elimination of tax breaks, to be developed in the future by the Republican controlled House Ways & Means committee.
The above two facets will give the Ryan plan massive advertising support (propaganda), thanks to the Citizens United decision, while stifling the opposition that would have come from the elderly had they not been protected. Genius.
On it’s face this looks like a no brainer, immediate gratification without immediate pain. A harmless, sheep like plan.
In the future however, comes the evil wolf. Medicare is terminated, replaced by $15,000 vouchers that would be used to by private insurance. Of course this will be much cheaper for the government but the vouchers will be totally insufficient for the majority of us who will have to dig into our retirement savings to make up the difference. At the same time the future eliminated tax breaks will fall, not on the wealthy, but overwhelmingly on the rest of us. The tax breaks the republicans have already identified as subject to elimination include items such the mortgage interest deduction the employer provided health insurance deduction and other items that serve to “broaden the base”.
Like I said, Ryan’s plan is genius. It provides a possible and politically plausible path to passage of a future tax structure that will massively benefit the wealthy & powerful while screwing the rest of us. Pure, evil genius.