Paul Ryan's Plan Neither Serious Nor Courageous
His budget punishes the poor and elderly but doesn't reduce the debt or deficit
By now, however, those who have actually examined the Ryan plan with care and competence know that those acclamations are highly exaggerated—and even that is probably a far too polite description.
If a serious budget is a budget that eventually curtails deficits and reduces the national debt within the foreseeable future, then the Ryan plan is a joke—as the most casual reader ought to be able to understand. His own published version of the plan doesn't offer any real estimates past a decade from now, when he still anticipates a substantial deficit. Beyond that, he cites Congressional Budget Office numbers that indicate the budget will at last achieve balance in the year 2040—or more than a quarter-century from today.
To accept that projection, unfortunately, requires us to simultaneously accept Ryan's utterly preposterous prediction that unemployment during the next 10 years will drop to 2.8%. As the economic sages at the Motley Fool point out, that is a fantastic claim, far below the normal unemployment rate of roughly 6%.
Should that kind of meteoric growth indeed occur over the coming decade, there would probably be no need to contemplate the cuts in spending and entitlements now contemplated by both Democrats and Republicans. Happy days would truly be here again. But the conservative Heritage Foundation, whose economists first calculated those wildly optimistic numbers for Ryan, has not been able to substantiate them—and in fact has now erased the figure from its website.
In other words, the same economists who formulated the numbers behind the Ryan budget have withdrawn their fundamental assertion, undermining his entire proposal.
Low Income
and Middle Class Would Shoulder the Cuts
For a budget to be serious, it would also have to
finance basic national needs that must be met for us to remain economically
competitive. At a minimum, those include massive repairs and rebuilding of the
crumbling infrastructure—roads, bridges, ports, airports and the communications
and electrical grids—as well as education and the environment.
But the Ryan plan envisions devastating reductions
in infrastructure, education and environmental spending, with cuts as high as
70%. Robert Greenstein, of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities—a
respected expert who would never dream of fraudulently projecting 2.8%
unemployment—says that Ryan's budget would ultimately defund all government
functions except for defense (and drastically diminished Medicare and Social
Security payments). In what sense is that a serious or responsible plan?
So the Ryan plan isn't really serious, but is it
courageous and uplifting? Only if slashing services for low-income Americans
and denying Medicare to tens of millions of older people is somehow brave and
inspirational—and only if courage is defined by doling out still more tax cuts
to the country's wealthiest families (like the construction magnates in the
Ryan family).
Greenstein calculates that at least two-thirds of
the cuts proposed by Ryan would have to come from programs for people with low
and moderate incomes, including food stamps, Pell grants, housing and Medicaid.
Meanwhile, he would literally ask nothing from the rich or corporate special
interests, except perhaps to cash their enormous tax refund checks with a
smile. Moreover, he would exempt one group from his scheme to abolish Medicare,
which just happens to be the voters now over 55 years old, who are the most
reliable Republican voters.
What might be truly courageous for a Republican
politician, of course, would be to urge sacrifice from his party's rich
contributors as well as from the poor and the middle class. That would be the
start of serious budgeting, too.
© 2011 Creators.com
I think the results of making more cuts to the unwealthy people of this country will be more crime. When people have to survive to feed their families with fewer and fewer options, they will get desperate. I'd rather pay higher taxes and support government programs to help people than have a more dangerous United States.
It WILL and has led to more crime. Not that the GOP and their uber-wealthy masters care. They just lock themselves up in gated communities and let the rest of us deal with the fallout. They've probably got bunkers too; I don't doubt it for a moment.
I think if we cut back on all the free handouts and entitlements that have caused people to choose the hammock over a job, then the unemployment figure will go down. People are not as lazy or incompetent as the Democrats want us to believe. People will always get the amount of money they desire through the path of least resistance. When you eliminate all the free handouts, then the path of least resistance is work. As people opt back into the workforce, unemployment goes down.
Also put into law mandetory paternal custody that all fathers must take full custody of their children. Therefore in order to care for them, they will probably opt back into the workforce rather than hit the hammock and tell the baby momma to get welfare.
Gee, DJL, if so many people opt for the hammock instead of work, then why aren't businesses clamoring over the shortage of workers? Why do they have lots more applications filled out than their are job openings?
Truth be told, there IS a shortage of workers, but it is a shortage of SKILLED workers that also happen to be willing to work for reduced wages while continuiing to pay an American "high cost of living". Problem, you cannot spend more than you earn!
What "wealth" is asking for is like a local company that was going bankrupt about 10 years ago. It's president demanded that everyone take a 10% pay cut... except for him of course.
If you cut the pay by 10%, then you also cut what those workers were spending in the economy by 10% too. How does that help society as a whole? Cutting net taxes will cut the government expenditures by just as much... unless government goes deeper in debt. Shifting taxes from wealthy to middle class and working class also reduces what was once spent in the local economy. Even reducing handouts reduces what can be spent in the local economy.
Money is moved, but not really created. Only debt can be created, and that is just pushing it off to the future (called letting someone else pay).
The economy is recovered and doing great. Just go out to dinner on a Friday night in Waukesha County and see how long you have to wait in line to eat at a nice expensive restaurant. What recession? People are waiting in line for 45 minutes to spend a lot of money.
The biggest complaint I get from clients is there are not enough workers filling out applications that are good looking, energetic, can do simple reading and math, can pass a credit and lie detector test. Too many have chosen not to be able to do that.
No one has to take a pay cut. I took a pay cut of about 10% in 1993 when I did not get my 10% bonus. I just started working side jobs for some consulting firms. I not only made up the 10% I lost, I probably gave myself about a 20% raise. Who did that consulting firm do work for? The company I was working for because they laid off too many people and needed to hire consultants to do the extra work. Insane!! If my company would have only come to me and said if I work weekends they would boost my salary by 25%, but no, they never considered that. Bottom line is when people want money to do things they want to do, they will figure out ways to get it.
WE Energies is cutting off electricity next week for peopel who have chosen not to pay over the winter. Take a drive along National Ave between 27th and 13th. You will find plenty of young ladies who suddenly have an incentive to earn money to pay their WE bill. When people want to work bad enough, they do what they need to do. We don't need the goverment creating make-work jobs or printing off money with deficit spending. Just let nature take its course.
yeah, if all 2 cents of the federal tax dollar spent on welfare bums in cadillacs went away we'd all be living on the high hog again. yeah, that's the problem. Not that thanks to 35 years of GOP driven trickle down voodoo economics we've been defunding universities and infrastructure so that even 3rd world hellholes in Asia and South America have surprased us in skilled labor. Now with economic growth in countries that DO have a strongly developing middle class exceeds ours 5 or 10: 1, companies are going THERE.
And no tax cut is going to change it.
You did it to yourself.
Why don't you learn where tax dollars come from and are spent before spouting.
Obama came out with his budget proposal today mostly for his lefty base. We have to cut spending, cut spending and cut some more.
Ryan's plan is a good start.
Anecdotal evidence and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Of all the stupid things GOP enablers do this is the dumbest of all.
With 10 different programs teaching fiscal responsibility from the government in several different agencies is a sign that the SPENDING is out of control at the government level.
We can't spend 40% above our income without consequences so why should we expect the government to be able to do the same.
This has NOTHING To do with Taxing more since if you do tax more during a RECESSION the budget gap will close but the economy WILL CRATER.
I hope all sides can resolve this but 65 should be the new 70 for anyone under 45 for Social Security. The NY Times article showed that THIS would close the SS gap and keep the people over 55 protected for this SS.