Hard to believe, but, as this link shows, about half of the $6 trillion in spending cuts in the Repubican 2012 Budget, released with such fanfare on Tuesday by its architect, Paul Ryan, aren’t used to reduce the deficit; they’re used to fund tax breaks for the rich and for corporations. And, no, I’m not making this up.
Equally hard to believe, under the Ryan Budget, the National Debt is projected to climb to $23 trillion by 2021, mainly because the spending cuts are used to fund tax breaks for the rich and because there will be no new tax revenues under the Ryan Budget. (The National Debt was $5 trillion and, because of the Clinton budget surplus, falling when Bush came into office.)
Not so hard to believe, the Ryan Budget is based on a bunch of ridiculous assumptions, e.g., that government revenues will always be 19% of GDP. I’m pretty sure that if this monstrosity were enacted, the National Debt would be higher than $23 trillion by 2021. One of the reasons I suspect this is because Ryan’s Budget is also premised on another questionable assumption, namely that his budget will create millions of jobs. This premise, in turn, is based on a study performed by The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing “think-tank” that predicted that the Bush Tax Cuts would generate an economic boom, boosting employment by about 6.5 million jobs. There was no boom and the Heritage prediction was off by about 6.5 million jobs.
As for Medicare “reform”, the Ryan Budget really doesn’t reform Medicare. Nothing is done to reduce the spiraling cost of medical services. Ryan’s Budget simply substitutes for the current Medicare system, under which Medicare pays for defined services, a voucher worth around $8,000 a year that people over 65 are supposed to use to buy insurance from private companies. Seniors with pre-existing conditions will probably be unable to purchase insurance and even healthy seniors, as they age, will find themselves excluded from the market. What insurance company is going to want to cover an 88 year old? The end result? Many, if not most, seniors will find the Medicare vouchers under the Ryan Budget insufficient to provide them coverage and many will be without insurance. Many seniors will die sooner than they would under the current system. We won’t have Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels”. We’ll just have plain old Death. Likewise, with Medicaid, there is no reform. The amounts spent on Medicaid are simple capped at a lower number.
Ryan has a new (and much hipper) haircut and I expect to see him on all the Sunday Morning Talk shows. I hope the moderators do their homework and expose this guy for the fraud he is.
I'm Not Making This Up... 