TNR: Paul Ryan's 'New' Budget

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Paul Ryan has released his new budget proposal, "The Path to Prosperity." It looks almost exactly like his old budget proposal. Really—go back and read the article I wrote one year ago, when the Wisconsin congressman introduced his budget proposal for the 2013 fiscal year, which he also called "The Path to Prosperity.” I said that proposal would take health insurance away from tens of millions of people, that it would starve government of resources to conduct everyday business, that it would take vital support away from low-income Americans, and that its promise of deficit reduction was illusory. Every one of those descriptions is equally valid today.

That tells us a lot about Ryan’s priorities—and how little interest he and his allies have in moderating their views, even though the public rejected them last year.1 Imagine Walter Mondale returning to Congress in 1985 and proposing a budget that undid President Reagan's agenda and reduced deficits by raising taxes on the middle class—in other words, the exact same thing he’d proposed in his losing campaign for the presidency. That will give you some idea of what Ryan is proposing, although Mondale's proposals didn't require the same rhetorical and mathematical games to show budget savings.


Ryan also has renewed his call for much lower “discretionary spending,” which is spending that doesn’t renew automatically like the entitlements do—think of food inspections, border control, housing assistance, pretty much any spending that requires regular congressional authorization. Ryan would protect defense spending from these cuts, meaning he needs larger cuts everywhere else. Last year I described Ryan’s budget as “effectively eliminating” these discretionary-spending programs. In retrospect, that was overstated. It would merely devastate those programs. As Ezra Klein writes, “The real justification for Ryan’s budget and the choices it makes is not fear of a debt crisis but fear of government.”

MORE (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112643/paul-ryan-budget-2013-path-prosperity-looks-lot-last-one)

[baseline bum]

LOL this douchebag costing the Republicans the presidency in an election that was gift-wrapped to them.

[spurraider21]

Ryan > Romney tbh

[boutons_deux]

LOL this douchebag costing the Republicans the presidency in an election that was gift-wrapped to them.

the focus is always the prez candidate, not the veep candidate.

Bishop Gecko, I Like To Fire People (in the 47%, etc, secrecy about his finances, etc), lost the election all by himself. He was just another shitty Repug pres candidate like Dole, dubya, McLiar.

[Wild Cobra]

the focus is always the prez candidate, not the veep candidate.

Bishop Gecko, I Like To Fire People (in the 47%, etc, secrecy about his finances, etc), lost the election all by himself. He was just another shitty Repug pres candidate like Dole, dubya, McLiar.
Love how you like to take statements out of context.

You should go read that article again.

[ElNono]

The definition of insanity...

[baseline bum]

the focus is always the prez candidate, not the veep candidate.

Bishop Gecko, I Like To Fire People (in the 47%, etc, secrecy about his finances, etc), lost the election all by himself. He was just another shitty Repug pres candidate like Dole, dubya, McLiar.

It allowed Obama to paint Romney as a rightwinger when he stupidly picked the teabagger who was hell-bent on destroying Medicare. Romney had solid rightwing support and a motivated base no matter what he would have done since he isn't a black Kenyan socialist with a faked birth certificate, so all he had to do was pretend to be a centrist for the general election and he would gotten enough of the independent vote to win. For good reason Obama wasn't popular and it's shocking the Republicans could be stupid enough to get beaten by such a weak incumbent. McCain never had any chance thanks to the shit-sandwich Bush left this nation, but Romney really could have won.

[LnGrrrR]

Honestly, this is a stupid budget, because there's no way it ever gets enacted. Even IF (and that's a huge IF) this budget would work as intended, there's no way it's passing without a supermajority. Likely not even then due to Medicare cuts/changes. Republicans seem fine with anything these days, as long as it doesn't involve increased taxes.

[boutons_deux]

"there's no way it ever gets enacted."

When the Repug philosophy is to hate and destroy govt, it's logical that they have no interest in governing, only in misgoverning, as we saw with 8 years of dubya/dickhead.

Sociopath "Catholic" Ryan putting forward, FOR THE 3RD TIME, passed already TWICE, a budget that will never be put into law is exactly the kind of useless, time-wasting, obstructive misgoverning the Repugs pride themselves on.

[boutons_deux]

House Appropriations Chair Takes Down Republican Budget: It ‘Cuts Too Much’

“I’ll be voting for it. It’s not exactly to my liking. There are a lot of things that I’m not happy with, including the overall big number,” he said. “It cuts too much spending, frankly, from the discretionary side of the budget. Most people don’t realize that we only appropriate 1/3 of federal spending … and we’ve cut that by $100 billion over the last two years.“

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/15/1724941/rogers-republican-budget/

He dislikes the insanity, but his intimidated dicklessness prevents hims from voting against it.

[boutons_deux]

Why does anyone still take Paul Ryan seriously?

discussing the absolute non-reality of his proposal—how the numbers don’t begin to add up, the unrealistic budget cuts, the plethora of magic asterisks in the absence of actual proposals (the most egregious of which is: I’ll cuts taxes by $6-7 trillion over the next decade and offset the revenue losses with…um…sorry, gotta run). And the interviewer was like, “OK…but if you’re right, why is his budget front page news such that he’s driving the debate?”
Here’s what I think is going on. First, institutional reasons. His party holds the majority and he’s the chair of the House Budget Committee. That in itself makes his budget newsworthy. Also, as a former VP candidate, he’s a national figure.

But that’s not the main reason.

I asked a wise, intently non-partisan friend who thought, and he admitted he was being generous, that one reason might be that Ryan’s introduced an important theme into the discussion: if you want really low taxes, you’ve got to give up Medicare as we know it.

But while that may be in there somewhere, it’s awfully muddled. It certainly wasn’t Ryan’s position in the election, where he and Mitt attacked the President for Medicare cuts. And his voucher program doesn’t start for ten years.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/why_is_paul_ryans_budget_being_taken_seriously_par tner/ (http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/why_is_paul_ryans_budget_being_taken_seriously_par tner/)

[boutons_deux]

Dwindling Deficit Disorder

For three years and more, policy debate in Washington has been dominated by warnings about the dangers of budget deficits. A few lonely economists have tried from the beginning to point out that this fixation is all wrong, that deficit spending is actually appropriate in a depressed economy. But even though the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far — where are the soaring interest rates we were promised? — protests that we are having the wrong conversation have consistently fallen on deaf ears.

What’s really remarkable at this point, however, is the persistence of the deficit fixation in the face of rapidly changing facts. People still talk as if the deficit were exploding, as if the United States budget were on an unsustainable path; in fact, the deficit is falling more rapidly than it has for generations, it is already down to sustainable levels, and it is too small given the state of the economy.

Start with the raw numbers. America’s budget deficit soared after the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that went with it, as revenue plunged and spending on unemployment benefits and other safety-net programs rose. And this rise in the deficit was a good thing! Federal spending helped sustain the economy at a time when the private sector was in panicked retreat; arguably, the stabilizing role of a large government was the main reason the Great Recession didn’t turn into a full replay of the Great Depression.

But after peaking in 2009 at $1.4 trillion, the deficit began coming down. The Congressional Budget Office expects the deficit for fiscal 2013 (which began in October and is almost half over) to be $845 billion. That may still sound like a big number, but given the state of the economy it really isn’t.

Bear in mind that the budget doesn’t have to be balanced to put us on a fiscally sustainable path; all we need is a deficit small enough that debt grows more slowly than the economy. To take the classic example, America never did pay off the debt from World War II — in fact, our debt doubled in the 30 years that followed the war. But debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell by three-quarters over the same period.

Right now, a sustainable deficit would be around $460 billion. The actual deficit is bigger than that. But according to new estimates by the budget office, half of our current deficit reflects the effects of a still-depressed economy. The “cyclically adjusted” deficit — what the deficit would be if we were near full employment — is only about $423 billion, which puts it in the sustainable range; next year the budget office expects that number to fall to just $172 billion. And that’s why budget office projections show the nation’s debt position more or less stable over the next decade.

So we do not, repeat do not, face any kind of deficit crisis either now or for years to come.

There are, of course, longer-term fiscal issues: rising health costs and an aging population will put the budget under growing pressure over the course of the 2020s. But I have yet to see any coherent explanation of why these longer-run concerns should determine budget policy right now. And as I said, given the needs of the economy, the deficit is currently too small.

Put it this way: Smart fiscal policy involves having the government spend when the private sector won’t, supporting the economy when it is weak and reducing debt only when it is strong. Yet the cyclically adjusted deficit as a share of G.D.P. is currently about what it was in 2006, at the height of the housing boom — and it is headed down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/krugman-dwindling-deficit-disorder.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0&pagewanted=print

Pete Peterson and the flock of deficit hawks really don't GAF about the deficit, they really want to privatize medicare and SS into the Wall St Banksters hands and into vampire squid for-profit insurers' pockets.

[boutons_deux]

Paul Ryan drinks deeply from pool of Social Security lies

--Life expectancy. Ryan observes, "Today, the average man can expect to live an additional 17.7 years after they turn 65. Women can expect to live another 20 years." Yes, but. Life expectancy is highly sensitive to economic status -- on average, the poor have shorter lives.

As Social Security experts showed in 2007, the gain in life expectancy after age 65 for Americans born in 1941 compared with those born in 1927 was three years -- for those in the top half of the earnings range. For those in the bottom half, the gain was less than one year. Lesson: There's no one-size-fits-all solution to rising life spans.

--Increasing numbers of beneficiaries. Ryan laments that in 1950, there were only 2.9 million Social Security recipients. Today there are 55 million. Right: In 1950, relatively few new retirees qualified for benefits in a program that only started paying old-age benefits in 1940. Originally, huge swaths of working people were excluded, including domestic workers and farmhands. They got added into the program over the next few years by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Importantly, the increase in America's elderly population was fully anticipated at the program's birth in 1935. Edwin Witte, the Wisconsin economist who was its architect, estimated for Congress that by 1980, one-eighth of the U.S. population would be 65 or older, and they would have to be provided for: "Whether you do it in the form of pensions or in some other way, there is no way of escaping that cost."

Incidentally, Witte actually overestimated the elderly population. In 2011, his figures would put the 65-plus population of the U.S. at 39 million. That year, according to the Social Security Administration, the number of retired workers including dependents collecting benefits was 38.5 million. What does Ryan suggest should be done with all these people? He doesn't say.

He also doesn't mention that some of the increase in beneficiaries over the years is due to new benefits enacted by Congress, such as stipends for school- and college-age children of deceased workers. Among the Americans who received those benefits as youngsters? Paul Ryan.

--Workers versus beneficiaries. The so-called dependency ratio is one of the oldest canards in the anti-Social Security arsenal. Short response: It has nothing to do with the program's fiscal health. Nevertheless, Ryan points out grimly that in 1950, there were about 16 workers for every retiree; today, about three. (Why stop at 1950? In 1940, the ratio was 159 workers per retiree!)

Ryan suggests that as a consequence of this bogus statistic, maintaining benefits for future retirees will mean raising payroll taxes to "crushing levels." Nonsense. The Congressional Budget Office, among other sources, projects that Social Security's share of the U.S. economy will increase by about 1.5 percentage points, to 6.63%, over the next 70 years. Removing the cap on annual income subject to payroll tax, currently set at about $113,000, would eliminate the projected deficit under almost any circumstances.

So, no sale. Ryan's latest budget proposal is just like his last two: It's an effort to gin up panic over programs that serve all Americans fairly and responsibly, so the comfortable, including members of Congress, don't have to worry about their own bank accounts.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-74774470/?related=true

[boutons_deux]

After the Flimflam

It has been a big week for budget documents. In fact, members of Congress have presented not one but two full-fledged, serious proposals for spending and taxes over the next decade.

let me talk briefly about the third proposal presented this week — the one that isn’t serious, that’s essentially a cruel joke.

Even then, his proposals were obviously fraudulent: huge cuts in aid to the poor, but even bigger tax cuts for the rich, with all the assertions of fiscal responsibility resting on claims that he would raise trillions of dollars by closing tax loopholes (which he refused to specify) and cutting discretionary spending (in ways he refused to specify).

Since then, his budgets have gotten even flimflammier. For example, at this point, Mr. Ryan is claiming that he can slash the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, yet somehow raise 19.1 percent of G.D.P. in revenues — a number we haven’t come close to seeing since the dot-com bubble burst a dozen years ago.

The good news is that Mr. Ryan’s thoroughly unconvincing policy-wonk act seems, finally, to have worn out its welcome. In 2011, his budget was initially treated with worshipful respect, which faded only slightly as critics pointed out the document’s many absurdities. This time around, quite a few pundits and reporters have greeted his release with the derision it deserves.

there’s a plan that does: the proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, titled “Back to Work,” which calls for substantial new spending now, temporarily widening the deficit, offset by major deficit reduction later in the next decade, largely though not entirely through higher taxes on the wealthy, corporations and pollution.

There are no Ryan-style magic asterisks, trillion-dollar savings that are assumed to come from unspecified sources; this is an honest proposal. And “Back to Work” rests on solid macroeconomic analysis, not the fantasy “expansionary austerity” economics — the claim that slashing spending in a depressed economy somehow promotes job growth rather than deepening the depression — that Mr. Ryan continues to espouse despite the doctrine’s total failure in Europe.


No, the only thing the progressive caucus and Mr. Ryan share is audacity. And it’s refreshing to see someone break with the usual Washington notion that political “courage” means proposing that we hurt the poor while sparing the rich. No doubt the caucus plan is too audacious to have any chance of becoming law; but the same can be said of the Ryan plan.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/opinion/krugman-after-the-flimflam.html

[Nbadan]

The New York Times has a story about Washington lobbyists’ effectiveness in convincing Congress to pass tax breaks that benefit the wealthy.

Just one of those tax breaks – capital gains and dividends – costs an estimated $161 billion a year. That would pay not just for the Sequester cuts, but also for all the additional cuts that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan wants to make in next year’s federal budget.

No surprise, the top 1% get 75% of the benefit of that particular tax break. (The bottom 60% of taxpayers get only 1% of the benefit.)

Another way to look at it? The amount the 1% gets from the unearned income tax break – just in a single year – would pay for 10 years of Paul Ryan’s cuts to Medicare.

[boutons_deux]

After Demanding Senate Pass A Budget, GOP Refuses To Enter Budget Negotiations (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/23/1909271/gop-refuses-budget-conference/)
House Republicans spent most of their time over the last three years reminding Americans that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget in two, then three, then four years. It was a regular Republican talking point, a particular favorite of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s. But now that the Senate has returned to regular order by passing a budget, House Republicans are refusing to come to the table to negotiate a long-term spending plan.


Republicans passed their own budget, the plan Ryan authored, in March, and since the proposal differs from the Senate budget, regular order requires the two chambers to come together in conference to iron out their differences in a compromise budget that is then taken back to the full memberships of each house. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has hinted at forming such a conference for more than a week, but Republicans have shown no willingness to join him. This morning, Senate Republicans blocked Reid from creating a conference (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/295477-reid-to-seek-consent-to-convene-budget-conference-) committee, a move that led Reid to accuse them of turning “a complete 180″:


“It seems House Republicans don’t want to be seen even discussing the possibility of compromise with the Democrats for fear of a Tea Party revolt,” Reid said.

He noted that Republicans have called for “regular order” for years.

“A strange thing happened: House Republicans did a complete 180 — they flipped. They’re no longer interested in regular order even though they preached that for years,” Reid said.

The GOP offered numerous excuses for why they wouldn’t approve a conference, including that certain rules need to be worked out. Ryan and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, have said they need to agree to “framework (http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/294371-reid-ryan-spar-over-budget-conference)” for a deal to make a compromise more likely.

What that “framework” would need to be to get Republicans to agree to conference, however, is clear: a deal that cuts spending but includes no new tax revenue (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/295477-reid-to-seek-consent-to-convene-budget-conference-). That has been a consistent GOP demand throughout budget and spending fights over the last three years, a sticking point that has brought the government to the brink (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/05/289861/breaking-s-p-downgrades-u-s-credit-for-the-first-time-in-history-repeatedly-cites-gop-intrasigence-on-taxes/) of both shutdown and default. It’s also a concession Democrats and President Obama are unwilling to make, given that they have already agreed to nearly $2.5 trillion in spending cuts while receiving little revenue in exchange. Any new deal, in fact, would have to achieve 90 percent (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/01/11/1437491/balance-90-percent-revenue/) of its deficit reduction from tax revenue to balance the overall reductions achieved in the last four years.


http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/23/1909271/gop-refuses-budget-conference/


Repug MISgovernance :lol

[RandomGuy]

The New York Times has a story about Washington lobbyists’ effectiveness in convincing Congress to pass tax breaks that benefit the wealthy.

Just one of those tax breaks – capital gains and dividends – costs an estimated $161 billion a year. That would pay not just for the Sequester cuts, but also for all the additional cuts that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan wants to make in next year’s federal budget.

No surprise, the top 1% get 75% of the benefit of that particular tax break. (The bottom 60% of taxpayers get only 1% of the benefit.)

Another way to look at it? The amount the 1% gets from the unearned income tax break – just in a single year – would pay for 10 years of Paul Ryan’s cuts to Medicare.

Not something that the Republican apologists would want to admit.

I believe the proper dogmatic rejoinder would be Darrin's worn "but they dont' have enough money to fix the debt" strawman.

It is the one area that the Rich Wing of the GOP is fucking the God Wing, and the God wing is simply nodding their heads, because the Rich Wing has convinced the God Wing that God wants the Rich to be Rich.

Gotta hand it to the propaganda arm of the Rich Wing. They have been effective.

[RandomGuy]

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