That's trillion. I do not think the Village can call him "serious" anymore. It's way too blatant, even for them.
To quote an old Twilight Zone, "it's a cookbook!" The Ryan Budget is class war on steroids. It is about cutting taxes on the wealthy and never would balance unless there were $5.7 Trillion in tax increases over 10 years. It would blow a hole in the defict and eviscerate New Deal programs:
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has just completed its analysis of the Paul Ryan budget, and it confirms once again just how regressive the GOP fiscal vision really is — and how absurd GOP intransigence on revenues remains. The key finding:
The Tax Policy Center estimates that cutting individual rates to 10 percent and 25 percent, repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax and the tax increases included in the Affordable Care Act, and cutting the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent would add $5.7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Thus, if House Republicans want to cut these taxes and still collect the revenues they promise, they’d have to raise other taxes by $5.7 trillion.
In other words, to pay for these tax cuts, the Ryan plan would require nearly $6 trillion in new revenues generated by closing loopholes and deductions. TPC’s Howard Gleckman says it is “hard to imagine” how that sum could be generated, which is to say, it is “hard to imagine” how tax cuts of this size would be paid for.
The Plum Line
The only good news is that the chances of a Grand Bargain are close to zero. I think President Obama will declare victory over the deficit for now and move on.
I do hope OFA notices this and starts advertsiing on the Ryan Budget.
This class war goes on and the new battles will be in 2014 and 2016.