A Generation of Termites
Paul Ryan's ruinous plan assumes the worst of older voters
That isn't how the boomers see themselves, of course, but that selfish stereotype is at the center of America's budget politics these days—especially the Republican Party's sweeping proposals to reorder priorities and reduce deficits, authored by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
The most obvious signal in Ryan's plan is that he exempts almost all of the boomers from his scheme to abolish Medicare and replace the highly popular and successful system with vouchers that will continuously diminish in value. As the budget chairman and his colleagues confront the fury that this idea has provoked among older voters, their chief selling point is that the changes won't affect anyone who is now 55 or over.
So they promise that if you're in the lucky boomer contingent, there is no need to worry—and no need to concern yourself with those who someday soon will have to purchase adequate health insurance with wholly inadequate funding.
In other words, the Republicans are relying on the allegedly mercenary character of the older voters who supported them so heavily last year, based on their vow to "protect" Medicare from mythical Democratic cutbacks. The GOP evidently hopes to persuade those voters, enraged by the bait-and-switch represented by the Ryan plan, that their narrowest interest is all that matters and will be protected.
Abandoning Our Ideals
What that means, to put it bluntly, is abandoning the American tradition of a social compact passed from one generation to the next—and the American ideal of a country that each generation preserves and improves for its children and grandchildren.
Indeed, in the guise of saving future generations from excessive federal debt, the same themes of national decay, egotistical greed and irresponsibility pervade the Ryan plan. To pay for enormous tax cuts for the wealthiest few while reducing future deficits, his budget decimates spending that will be essential to the most basic maintenance of infrastructure, education, research and even national security.
We know that the nation's great network of federal and state highways, bridges, tunnels, ports, airports, railways, stations and subways—the marvelous legacy of previous generations—is rapidly decaying after decades of neglect. The Republicans propose to cut future spending on transportation by half over the coming decade, and still more in the decades that follow, because there will simply be no money to finance repairs, let alone improvements—not nearly enough to keep roads and bridges in decent condition, and nothing to create the high-speed rail systems boasted by our competitors in Europe and Asia.
The same short-term, self-serving and plainly stupid priorities will wreak equivalent damage on education, training and scientific research. According to the Center for American Progress, the Ryan plan would "disinvest" in education and training by 53%, diverting resources away from primary and adult education, career and technical training, community colleges, post-secondary education and student aid at a time when our world educational status is already in perilous decline.
So if the Republican budget plan (or anything resembling it) is enacted, the boomers, having entered adulthood with the most progressive and idealistic intentions, will fulfill the worst predictions about them. They will leave behind a nation whose shaky social and physical foundations may well collapse into ruin. Are they such a generation of termites, as the Republicans cynically assume? Or will they take responsibility for the future and leave a country to their children still worthy of its name?
© 2011 Creators.com
What part of we cannot spend money we don't have, guys like this just do not understand?
What part of "another effin' tax cut for the rich while we leave grandma & grandpa out to die in the woods at the mercy of insurance companies" don't you understand?
@WiscActor- find the "tax cut for the rich" in Ryan's plan. It's not there- that is an absolute lie. Ryan's plan simply does not include tax increases on anyone. As far as your tired argument that grandma will be eating dog food, Medicare and Medicaid are simply unsustainable as they exist now. Something needs to be done. Taxing the rich is not the answer- the rich have very little income, and taxing the income of the top 1% at 100% wouldn't even balance the budget for one year. Are you in favor of confiscating wealth? Literally taking it away by force? That's the only way the rich can solve this problem.
Do some research, Pyggy! Or quit spreading lies.
As part of the tax-reform part of the plan, the tax rate for corporations and the top income bracket would be lowered from 35 percent to 25 percent, while the lost revenue would be offset by ending various deductions, exemptions, and credits that save money for the middle class. According to the Center for Tax Justice, taxes for the poorest 90 percent of Americans would rise under this plan. As Jonathan Chait writes, Ryan's plan includes "a huge tax cut for people who don't really need it." But Republicans believe that after giving more money to rich people, it will trickle down to the rest of us eventually. It's called trickle-down economics. And we all know how well that shit has worked the last 10 yrs. There is an easy way to guarantee Medicare & SS well into the future, & that is to raise the taxable thresholds. It's about time the rich paid their fair share. And save the BS about how 50% of taxes are paid by the upper 2% (or what ever the %'s are). Main Street America's not buying that like of crap anymore!
Joe, you need to stop the inflammatory liberal hate-the-rich speech, break it down to dangerous, unsustainable trends, not personal attacks.
This country is in "harvest mode", we are not planting the next crop anymore. It is time for the owners to liquidate their investments, cash out. That's why the lowering tax brackets. Rather than wait until the capital gains of selling their shares to the next investor, the intent is to lower the income tax rate so that they can pay out the wealth of a company as salary and bonuses, no need to preserve the value of the company in order to sell to the next investor.
You want to reform taxes, create jobs? Jack up the taxes on high income brackets, get government redistribution revenues from those big salaries and bonuses. Lower the taxes on capital gains and corporate profits, and PROHIBIT paying an executive with shares of the company stock. Make him buy it after he pays taxes on the income, then we won't tax it again when he sells it for capital gains. By depending on capital gains as the only way to make tax-free money, there will be damn good reason to keep the company healthy and the stock value going up.
More examples of "cashing out"...
Look at your "sub-prime" loans to all those inner city folk, that was a plan hatched in the 90's to bring in new "investors" to pay the full value of the old homes in the "darkening city" so that the seller could qualify to purchase a more desirable (and whiter) suburb home, where Big Oil can make more off the commute. It was not the fault of minority buyers who could not afford to buy. It was the fault of a system of greedy players who intended to pass the risk on like a hot potato, before the first payment is ever made (much less missed), never to look back again. Bailed out mortgage-backed security banks to be made whole by the future taxpayer.
Look at the "investor schools" like Kaplan and the online schools, the scandals of degrees that employers will not hire, leaving the graduating student with a non-bankruptable, unpayable government backed student loan, meanwhile this private school ran off with that government-backed money. Student Loan defaults to be born by the future taxpayer.
I've long suspected corporate boardroom decisions. The game is to "acquire" the technology, the means of production, particularly if it was developed in a way it can be implemented where there is a low cost labor base. At no point today do they ever say "invent" or "develop" internally. They want to buy that which has already been invented and developed, someone else has already paid for the dead ends, mistakes, Murphys Law, the failed projects. A few "Angel Investors" will get rich, the ones who lucked out, and most other investors will have gone bankrupt. That's business, take advantage of other peoples failures!
Ya think these businesses are "Bullish on America"?
I know some who say they need more business people in our government, but look what they do? Government should be there to balance out against the forces of greed and the dog-eat-dog sifting and winnowing that business encourages. We need to make government work again, keep it powerful enough to take on a global corporate interest.
That means voting in those who are not corporate backed, vote in the Dennis Kusinich types, vote in qualified lawyers and statesmen, economists and historians, those who can write their own bills and laws, not just submit what a corporate lobbyist has already written for them.
Vote in truly educated and scholarly people, not Wall Street Journal readers (Note: the WSJ is written at a 6th grade level, is that a hint?)
So the answer to all the goverment spending problems is to just tax the rich. So what is rich? I think its anyone who makes more money that you do. I was just reading how people become millionaires. Its more to do with their spending habits rather than their income. People end up poor because not of income but because they are bad money and debt managers. Goverment the same way. Look at the idiots who lost their homes to foreclosure - they paid too much and borrowed to much. I know quite a few millionaires who never made more than $100k a year. They live on $50k, bank $50k. I know people who make $200k a year and are broke. Because they spend $300k a year. I know some millionaires that have zero taxable income. Ok, raise their rates to 70%, big deal, they have no taxable income. Its all tax free municiapal bond interest, return of capital real estate dividends, and plenty of the same deductions poor people have. Should we punish the poor $100k guy a year because he chose to save 50% of his income and then reward the $200k a year guy who is dead broke when he retires because he chose to spend it all and then some?
I remember a relative who made double my income come crawling to me to borrow money to pay his mortgage. Here I was, living in a one room studio apartment and he in a McMansion. I had plenty of bank, he had plenty of debt. I made a choice to live poor and he made a choice to live the high life on credit cards. He looked pretty f...ing stupid coming to me and asking for money. Thats was the Democrats look like right now. They are asking the hard working good people to share a little wealth with the people who chose not to live frugally, those who chose not to save, those who chose not to go out and make some good coin, so the losers can go out and live the high life.
Joe,
What kind of baby boomers do you know? We aren't out to ruin anything. Congress, past and present, are the ones who raided Social Security. It's not short of funds because of the baby boomers. We just happen to be hitting retirement as a group, and Comngress is using us to blame for the shortage of funds. I've shocked people when I've told them that Social Security funds are going into the general revenue fund. Who knows what Congress is using them for. I've asked Rep. Ryan to put them into a locked fund and do an audit to see how much Congress has stolen from retirees. He never answers me.
I'm not on Medicare, yet. However Rep. Ryan and the other Republicans are the ones you should be calling termites. Thanks to the way President Bush insisted Medicaid D be written and the refusal of Republicans to change it the drug companies profits have increased by billions while the Republicans complain that the country is spending too much on health care. The Republicans insist on not negotiating drug prices and the drug companies have raised the prices of their products over the amount of inflation every year for the past several years. Apparently you don't read articles in any paper but your own. If you had you would known that Rep. Ryan was booed by the Older People his listening sessions when he talked about his Medicare plan for those under 55.
If the Democrats hadn't continued to spend money the country doesn't have after the Republicans added billions to the deficit they wouldn't have lost their majority in the House and be in danger of losing the Senate.
So if you want to blame anybody for any shortfalls, blame the Republicans. I, my husband and our friends all have children. None of us want to see them paying off the deficit through increased taxes. The Republicans are trying to divide the country by age and it's people like you who don't think that are going to do it!
Sandra Herek
Oak Creek, WI
PS Don't fall for Rep Ryan's story on privatizing Social Security. He says the funds will be invested just like members of Congress. From e-mails with his office I've learned the funds will be guaranteed, but not put into a locked fund. When I asked if couldn't these funds become an entitlement some day, he didn't answer me. His favorite way to ignore questions he knows you won't like the answer to. So his privatization plan sounds like what the taxpayers were told when Social Security started and look hat happened to that. Besides that, who knows how much the government will take for other programs. Rep. Ryan told me when I asked about Social Security that just because one agency borrows from another one it doesn't means those funds have to be replaced. And don't get me started on the Class Act in President Obama's Heathcare Plan