Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
It appears as if the Republican "numbers cruncher" Paul Ryan is at it again. Fresh off an election in which his last budget and the numbers therein were widely vetted and rejected you would think he would have learned his lesson. That Americans simply do not want the kind of Austerity at all costs he and his Republican ilk subscribe to. However, far from learning his lesson Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans are doubling down with an even more extreme, heartless version of the "Ryan Roadmap"
Because it appears as if the new Ryan map leads down a road straight to hell. Which is exactly where he and the Republicans that subscribe to his ideas are telling millions of Americans they can go. But of course one thing that was left out of the new "roadmap" for our future was any kind of sacrifice from Ryan or any of his ilk.
Ryan and the Republicans hypocritically take the cuts they already "compromised on" with Obama even though Republicans say Obama has cut nothing and takes them to an even more draconian level. He would also repeal the only chance tens of millions of hardworking Americans have to obtain healthcare insurance away:
Ryan has been releasing an annual plan to sledgehammer U.S. spending for years now, but this time, the mighty hammer falls with a bit of a tailwind. Our deficits are already going down, by a lot. First was the Budget Control Act of 2011, which scheduled $900 billion of cuts over the next ten years. Second was the Fiscal Cliff Deal, which raised taxes on family income over $450,000. Third was the sequester, which cuts another $1.2 trillion -- half from defense, half from non-defense -- over the next decade.
Ryan pockets all of those savings. And he goes further. Much further. He repeals Obamacare. He cuts federal support for Medicaid. He cuts another $1 trillion from "mandatory spending", which is a deceptively anodyne catch-all for mostly (a) cash assistance to the unemployed, low-income, and veterans, and (b) retirement programs for vets and federal employees.
http://www.theatlantic.com/...
In other words, Ryan is adding cuts Republicans say don't even exist into his framework but does not believe that is hypocritical enough. He is asking for more blood and sacrifice from the working poor, the middle-class, the unemployed, veterans, seniors, children and federal employees. To the Republican Party no amount of sacrifice from these folks is ever going to be enough.
Why? Because quite simply Paul Ryan and the Republicans are never going to ask for sacrifice for themselves or the very few people they truly represent. While this budget is full of sacrifices for me and you Paul Ryan refuses to ask for any sacrifice from the top 2%. In fact, his budget is yet another round of giveaways and tax breaks designed to create even more income inequality in this country:
The tax plan would cut the top rate to 25 percent -- a 15-point reduction for income above $450,00 -- but somehow it would also collect the same amount of revenue as the president's current policy. Quick math: If you cut tax rates for the top 0.1 percent in half, the only way to make the same amount of money is (a) to practically wipe out all of their tax advantages or (b) to raise taxes disproportionately on the bottom 99.9 percent. To be clear: As written, this is almost certainly a plan to raise taxes on the same lower-middle class which is also getting hit with massive spending cuts.
Get that? So not only will the Ryan budget produce more draconian cuts for the very folks that have sacrificed the most, worked the hardest and seen the least income gains in the last thirty years but they will be expected to foot the bill for the huge funding gap Ryan's tax cuts for folks like himself will produce. After bailing the top 2% out once we are expected again to sacrifice for the problems their greed created.
Indeed all the bad ideas Ryan lost on are back only this version makes them seem like they are on steroids, or quite possibly have been smoking crack:
All the tired ideas from 2011 and 2012 are back: eliminating Medicare’s guarantee to retirees by turning it into a voucher plan; dispensing with Medicaid and food stamps by turning them into block grants for states to cut freely; repealing most of the reforms to health care and Wall Street; shrinking beyond recognition the federal role in education, job training, transportation and scientific and medical research. The public opinion of these callous proposals was made clear in the fall election, but Mr. Ryan is too ideologically fervid to have learned that lesson.
The 2014 budget is even worse than that of the previous two years because it attempts to balance the budget in 10 years instead of the previous 20 or more. That would take nondefense discretionary spending down to nearly 2 percent of the economy, the lowest in modern history. And in its laziest section, it sets a goal of slashing the top tax rate for the rich to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, though naturally Mr. Ryan doesn’t explain how this could happen without raising taxes on middle- and lower-income people. (Sound familiar?)
http://www.nytimes.com/...
And once again it boils down to one simple fact. All of us are going to be paying for this Austerity, not folks like Paul Ryan. Worse yet, as the Christian Science Monitor points out these policies are severely misled, have been tried before and simply DO NOT WORK:
Austerity economics — of which Ryan’s upcoming budget is the most extreme version — is a cruel hoax. Cruel because it hurts most those who are already hurting; a hoax because it doesn’t work.
The entire framework is based on the false analogy that the federal budget is akin to a family’s budget.
Families do have to balance their budgets. But that’s precisely why the federal government has to be the spender of last resort when consumer spending falls short of boosting the economy toward full employment.
And as long as income and wealth continue to concentrate at the very top, the broad middle class and those aspiring to join it won’t have the purchasing power to boost the economy.
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
Why is it so hard for folks to understand? As long as so many people have too little money to be able to contribute to our economy past just paying the bills and sometimes not even that our economy will never recover. If these policies Paul Ryan so desperately wants to enact worked then our economy would not have crashed in the first place. It was greed, not debt that crashed our economy and this budget simply offers more of the same greed while blatantly leaving millions of Americans in the cold.
Of course as with anything that is totally selfish and idiotic, the Senator for Communist China Mitch McConnell is all for it:
“I commend Chairman Ryan for releasing a serious and detailed budget blueprint for getting our nation’s fiscal house in order. His budget recognizes the need to grow the economy, not the government. With our country’s debt at crisis levels, Congressman Ryan’s plan would balance the budget in 10 years, which will foster a healthier economy and help create jobs. By contrast, the budget that Senate Democrats will release this week won’t balance – ever. We all know that families must balance their budgets, and Washington should, too. Today’s House Republican budget puts our nation firmly on a path to get our spending and debt in order so we can regain control of our economic future.”
http://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/...
Of course he fails to mention the effect he and his policies of greed had in running up that very debt he rails against. He also fails to mention how he has obstructed American recovery over the last five years in a shameless attempt to score cheap political points and get Obama defeated at the polls.
Which is really all you need to know. One thing we have learned around here through bitter experience is this. Any time Mitch McConnell is excited about something and is heaping praise on someone's ideas you can be sure that it is a very bad thing for our country indeed. Mitch McConnell will never endorse anything that would help our country as a whole because he wants us to suffer for shunning the Republicans and their ideas and for electing President Obama twice.
That is why the greatest mistake the President or any Democrat can make is using this budget as some kind of measuring stick or beginning point for any negotiations. Republicans have shown their true goal which is the enrichment of themselves at the expense of everyone else. They will do anything to accomplish that goal and the new Ryan budget is just another sorry reminder of that sad fact.