Aka an attack on the American Middle Class, Poor, and Federal Workers http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf In this plan, he hammers Federal workers by reducing their workforce, reducing their pay, and slashing their benefits. He shifts the tax burden to the Middle Class by cutting taxes on the rich by 10%, but leaving everyone else's where they are. He cuts off at least 30M people from Health Insurance by repealing the Health Care, going to a Block Grant for Medicaid, and going to a glorified voucher system for Medicare. Btw he also lies about what Health Care Reform does. He disembowels FinReg, so that Banks are allowed to run free again. (He also lies about that Bill, claiming the Bill intends to Sustain Bailouts...though it's intention was to ensure that situation never happens again). He blames Obama 100% for Gas Prices, and lies about him again, claiming that Gas Prices more than doubled while he was in office. Gas prices were around $4 a gallon in the summer before he took office, and there was never a time when they were less then $2 while he was on office. Today they around $3.50, and a year ago they were $2.60. Never mind that most of the Middle East has risen up in revolt, or that BP dumped god knows how much oil into the Gulf, or that 70% of the world's oil supply comes from the Middle East, and that Oil is a fungible good. It's still completely Obama's fault. He also wants to destroy the regulations that protect the environment, so Big Energy can rape the planet. He scales back a "job killing national energy tax"...which doesn't exist. He maintains tax credits and tax cuts to oil production and exploration, and kills any Federal Help for alternative energy sources. Oh and if you don't have a job? You can't get Food stamps. Of course if you have a job, you probably don't need Food Stamps. Destroy the increase in Pell Grants, and claim Pell Grants are responsible for increasing tuition. Really, he does this. There's a lot more crap in there as well. I used to have a great deal of respect for Paul Ryan. Now I know he's nothing more than a modern day Faux Conservative.
You left off how he helped to boost the deficit that he so opposes by fighting for tax cuts, and how he won't touch defense even as he wants to slash funding for food stamps, Head Start, Pell Grants, health insurance, and pretty much everything else that helps the poor. But you're on track.
FYI, I used to vote for Republicans sometimes. Now I don't consider the possibility. They are either unrepentant right wingers, which is fine in that they are honest but it's not my brand of policy, or they are frauds like Paul Ryan or Mark Kirk who talk about responsibility and bipartisanship, then try to kill every Dem program and save every Republican program. The moderate Republican is extinct.
A choice of two futures - Obama's Narnia budget vs Ryan’s honest real world budget that bravely tackles our fiscal woes: And a predictable BS reaction.
Just because it's predictable doesn't make it false. Paul Ryan's graph's are Bullsh!t, and thee's nothing "Brave" about his budget. It's nothing more than a Republican agenda on steroids.
Its intentions and actual actions are different - the Bill does sustains bailouts. He's wrong to blame Obama here. Blame should lie with the Fed. Unless Ryan is hinting that Obama is dictating terms at the Fed.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwv5EbxXSmE&feature=player_detailpage"]YouTube - The Path to Prosperity: America's two futures, visualized[/ame]
Sorry, are you being serious? Or are you poking fun at Ryan's budget for using Heritage Foundation projections that claim Ryan's budget will lower the unemployment rate to 4%(!!) by 2015 if we simply decrease taxes for the rich?
Brave my ass. Brave would be admitting that 30 years of tax cuts have been a massive contributor to the deficit, as have been multiple foreign wars started by President Bush and the bloated Pentagon. Brave would be saying that tax increases and big defense cuts need to be a part of the plan, along with cutting the Medicare and social programs that the Dems like. That would be brave.
God, again with this. You can't blame the Fed for rising commodity prices due to QE unless they're rising relative to other currencies. But they're not! It's not remotely surprising that the price for oil fell during the recession, because we didn't need as much oil. Now that the world's economies are growing again, the price for oil has gone back up. It's not the Fed.
I'm really not too interested in what Paul Ryan says. But the idea that, as my dotage approaches, that I won't at least have medicare to rely on (SS frankly I'm less concerned about) just pisses me off, and it's just very, very wrong.
brave would have been passing a budget last year when you had the House, the Senate and the White House in the hands of the Democrats since the Dems could not pass one for 2011 when they controlled Congress and the WH, they should let Ryan and the GOP have a freebie for 2012
I never talk about Bush. But Ryan needs to. Not directly. But indirectly, he needs to acknowledge that his own party bears some major responsibility for this mess, and that his own party needs to change its ways, just as the Dems need to make changes. That would be leadership. As opposed to being a party hack.
I call Bullshit on this chart, People would stop lending to the government once we reached 200% of debt to GDP. So there is no way we will ever reach 800%. Also is dude accounting for S.S> and medicare spending on the green part of this B.S. chart?
It was Churchill, a Conservative I might add, who popularized the phrase "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it". What got us from a budget surplus in the late 90s to wild deficit spending during a period of moderate economic growth until mid 2008? 1. Wars that were unsupported financially. 2. tax cuts that were not supported by commensurate spending cuts. Then the economy tanked, why? 1. Lack of financial regulation and enforcement. At that point, we had a policy choice: 1. Deficit spend to try to stave off an even deeper recession or perhaps depression. or 2. Not deficit spend, go into a deeper recession, but not face as large a budget deficit as we do now. Now, if you want to debate the policy choice, go ahead, it's debatable. President Obama and the Democratic congress made a choice, and it was, more or less, number 1. I think that was the best option, but it's debatable. However, you simply can't call that decision irrational. It is known by economists to a moral certainty that government spending will create either a few jobs or many jobs. so now look at the previous years. Was fighting two wars and taking them off the budget so that they weren't factored in when actually doing the budget of the United States a rational choice? Uhmmm, no. Even wars aside, was six years of a republican white house and congress instituting tax cuts and not enacting commensurate spending cuts during times of mostly moderate growth rational decisions? No. And that has to inform the debate now. We balanced the budget and experienced decent growth in the 90s without eliminating medicare and eviscerating the last of the social safety net and the middle class. I mean look, after 8 years of tax cuts and wild spending sprees, George Bush still launched us into a deadly recession, I mean really, that's an all time record of bad governance. At least Hoover had the excuse of Conservative austerity. So to me, a principled policy document will look at what can be changed from the Bush era first. Right? That's the low hanging fruit. And as we continue to emerge from the Recession, we can look at cutting spending (and tax cuts) that was specific to the relief from the recession. But the radical document released by Ryan is nothing less than a Conservative trojan horse like we saw in Wisconsin and what we saw in Ohio. It is seeking to use a conservative Republican induced emergency to promote a Conservative agenda. And it's awful.
Yup. The Dem equivalent would be to introduce a proposal that sharply raises taxes, especially on the wealthy, that slashes defense,, and that does not touch Medicare, Social Security, domestic programs, or public sector salaries. If a Dem did this and claimed that it was solely for the good of the country, he'd be laughed off the stage for pitching the Dem product without even attempting to engage the Republicans. The press needs to do its job by treating Ryan the same way.
Btw, Ryan's Medicare plan might actually save even more money than he projects...because under his plan they'd all die because of lack of coverage. He wants to repeal the Health Care Law, and then let Retirees shops for private coverage while giving them some subsidies. First of all, reitrees would find it incredibly difficult to even FIND someone to cover them, and the ones they do, would charge well over 20K per year, because of the risk of covering someone who's 65 years old. Even WITH subsidies, most retirees would struggle to make ends meet. He's just leaving them out in the cold.
True that since we need to do all, cut the shit out of Medicare, aid, limit S.S. Benefits, Not cut any more spending (maybe raise taxes for all) and cut military spending, social benefits. My plan to fix S.S. Tell all Americans under 40 (I am under 40) you will not get Social Security Benefits ever! But you will continue to contribute to this pyramid scheme so those over 40 can benefit. That way we all (relative young) know that we better start saving if we do not want to be old and poor (maybe a nice tax deduction for extra 401/IRA/other savings plans). Then again I am not running for election, if I were, I would never get elected with that plan .
Note that this doesn't apply to current or upcoming retirees. The deal appears to be that if the oldsters support Ryan by throwing the next generation under the bus, then they will get their goodies as planned. Divide and conquer, eh?
I'm fine with slashing the budget and lowering taxes as long as we're cutting defense, not health care. I guess Ryan looks at this in a couple ways. He gets to kill off a bunch of old hippies and poor people, which secures the voter base, and he's putting money into the pockets of big business, which will eventually make its way back to the Republican Party. This is a blatant power grab.
The ONLY reasonable plan for SS is to stop acting like it's the problem. SS is not the problem. Anyone saying it is, is either ignorant or dishonest. MEDICARE is the problem. And, of course, one of the best fixes for Medicare would be to change the payer/payee ratio, and the easiest way to do that would be to increase immigration. If the Republicans didn't hate brown people so much they'd consider it.