Republicans have seized on a new budget plan put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as the answer to our debt and deficit crisis.
We obviously don't have to tell you what the plan calls for: Massive tax cuts for the rich and massive cuts in government spending.
But what has most irritated liberal Paul Krugman about the plan is that, even though Republicans are billing it as the answer to our our deficit "apocalypse," it won't cut the deficit at all.
And how has Rep. Ryan gotten everyone so excited about the deficit-cutting prowess of a plan that won't cut the deficit at all?
He only asked the Congressional Budget Office to run the numbers on his proposed spending cuts, not on the combined impact of his spending cuts AND his revenue cuts (via the massive tax cuts to the rich). And the media apparently fell for this.
When you look at the spending and revenue cuts together, the deficit doesn't change much under the "Roadmap For America's Future." Rich people just get to keep more of their incomes and they don't have to experience the mortification of watching their confiscated salaries being used to pay for food, education, healthcare, and so forth for the poor. (And, yes, for appalling government waste and pork projects that should be slashed immediately.)
The [Washington Post] tells us that [Ryan's] plan would, indeed, sharply reduce the flow of red ink: “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan would cut the budget deficit in half by 2020.”
But the budget office has done no such thing. At Mr. Ryan’s request, it produced an estimate of the budget effects of his proposed spending cuts — period. It didn’t address the revenue losses from his tax cuts.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion.
And that’s about the same as the budget office’s estimate of the 2020 deficit under the Obama administration’s plans.
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
- Don't Be Fooled By The Deficit Hawks
- Why The U.S. Will Never Have A Balanced Budget Again
- Niall Ferguson: Empires Fall Abruptly, And The American Empire Is On The Brink
Full story at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/4r7lJd8iaCk/krugman-roadmap-for-americas-future-a-fraud-2010-8
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment