It’s a pretty simple question: If Paul Ryan honestly believes — as he’s said over and over — that “we face the threat of a debt crisis,” why would he be proposing any tax breaks for those who need them the least?
A new study from Citizens for Tax Justice explains that Ryan’s budget includes massive tax breaks for the rich:
“In fact, under Ryan’s plan, taxpayers with income exceeding $1 million in 2014 would receive an average net tax decrease of over $200,000 that year even if they had to give up all of their tax expenditures. These taxpayers would see an even larger net tax decrease if Congress failed to limit or eliminate enough tax expenditures to offset the costs of the proposed tax cuts.”
Meanwhile, the budget committee chairman wants to make most seniors pay thousands more a year for Medicare, and cut Medicaid at an even faster rate than his last budget, stripping the federal government of its ability to provide a basic safety net for the poor.
This is why The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Robert Greenstein calls this Ryan budget (and the last), “Robin Hood in reverse — on steroids.”
The New Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn described the potential impact of the last Ryan budget:
Many millions of working-age Americans would lose health insurance. Senior citizens would anguish over whether to pay their rent or their medical bills, in a way they haven’t since the 1960s. Government would be so starved of resources that, by 2050, it wouldn’t have enough money for core functions like food inspections and highway maintenance. And the richest Americans would get a huge tax cut.
And his new budget makes the cuts faster, with the only change being that instead of a firm target of a top individual rate of 25 percent, it’s merely “a goal.”
Why would this be Ryan’s goal?
Ryan’s budget would be a solution if America’s problem was that the rich weren’t rich enough, corporations weren’t hoarding billions in offshore havens and too many people had health care.
Basically Paul Ryan’s plan solves none of the problems we have — and would likely make the actual crises we are facing much worse.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
