The metaphor of the federal government as a family that needs to cut back on spending is a popular one today. But when a family finds itself in difficult financial circumstances, there are at least two major options: (1) reduce spending, or (2) increase income. Now imagine a family that is having difficulty paying its bills, and the family decides that it needs to bring in less income. The family tells you that if they were $10,000 poorer, they would be better able to pay their bills. Most people would say that this family is insane. If you can't pay your bills you need more income not less.
Yet, conservatives have been reducing the government's income -- tax revenue -- massively. The tax cuts that conservatives have been pushing shows that they are not serious about addressing government deficits and debt. What they are serious about is increasing the wealth of the rich.
In December, the Tax Cut-Unemployment Compromise Bill included $139 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy. Among the items that conservatives won in this deal was a reduction in the taxes paid by people inheriting estates worth up to $5 million. Most of the people inheriting $5 million estates are no doubt quite well-off before the inheritance. Yet, conservatives were willing to keep unemployed workers from receiving unemployment insurance until they made certain that the rich would pay fewer taxes on inheritances.
The $5 million level in the new estate tax provision is indexed to inflation so that it does not decline in value over time. While this provision for millionaires is indexed to inflation, the minimum wage for the lowest-income American workers is not. Year after year, we allow the minimum wage to decline in value and allow the living standards of the poorest workers to degrade, but when it comes to policies for millionaires policymakers remember to make sure that millionaire's benefits do not erode over time.
The latest and most-hyped among the conservative budget plans is Congressman Paul Ryan's. Ryan's budget plan proposes $4.3 trillion in cuts to programs for the needy with one hand and then gives $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy with the other. Thus, there is little in the way of debt reduction, just pain for the needy and windfalls for the rich.
And Ryan is extremely generous when it comes to dishing out pain for those who are not rich. His plan greatly weakens Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Pell Grants. Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities states that Ryan's plan "would produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history, while increasing poverty and inequality more than any measure in recent times and possibly in the nation's history." This is a money grab for the rich, not a serious attempt to address the national debt.
"The Federal Treasury loses twice as much revenue due to tax breaks than Congress appropriates on all nonsecurity discretionary spending" reports the Center for American Progress, yet over and over again the target for conservatives is nonsecurity spending and not tax breaks. Social Security does not add to the national debt since it is funded separately from the federal budget and still has a surplus in its trust fund, but conservatives keep throwing it into debt reduction plans. None of this makes sense if one is truly concerned about our annual deficits and the national debt.
The real goal of conservatives is the perennial conservative goal of giving tax cuts to the wealthy and drastically reducing government services to low-income Americans. They have skillfully used the economic crisis (caused by the conservative policy of deregulating financial institutions, by the way) to mask their agenda. They would not be able to so easily accomplish this goal without the assistance of Democratic leadership in Washington. Key Democrats are more interested in forwarding their re-election strategy of appearing centrist and compromising with conservatives than in criticizing dangerously misguided conservative policies.
Follow Algernon Austin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EPInstitute
Linda Bergthold: Show Me the Money -- Obama vs. Ryan
Cenk Uygur: Progressives Must Stand Up to the President
Paul Abrams: Ryan Medicare Scheme Would Devastate Entrepreneurship, Jobs
Mike Lux: Medicare and Medicaid: Obama vs. Ryan
Ron Paul Bashes Paul Ryan's Budget, Calls Big Government 'King'
Paul Ryan Budget Proposal Marks Political Gamble For Republicans
Paul Ryan's Budget Proposal: Analysis Of The Numbers [UPDATE]
Paul Ryan's budget would slash $6 trillion, reform entitlements ...
Some in GOP squirm over Paul Ryan budget - Jake Sherman and Marin ...
This is just like the silence from the american medical association when the republican party attacked abortion. I thought, no doctor would go along with letting a woman die (say, in an ER, bleeding to death from a problem pregnancy) in order to avoid aborting the pregnancy...and nothing. We heard no outrage from the AMA at all at the thought of letting a woman die. Remember, republicans claim that we abort 1/3 of possible tax payers, but they are okay at allowing existing tax payers to die to "save a life"? What's everyone smoking?
When the economy collapses the rich came out to pick up the freebies..........................point the finger at the middle class that we need to manage our finances better.
My unborn great-grandchildren want to thank all the rich for putting them in debt and we don't even know yet whether these grandchildren are male or female. What a great country.
This year we had a $3.72 Trillion dollar budget. There are 330 million of us, and every single one of us has the same constitutional rights and every single one of us ought to be paying our pro-rata share.
Do the division. The magic number is $11720. If you (individually) paid that much in federal taxes, you did your fair share. If you didn't pay that much in federal taxes, some rich guy paid your share for you. He (or she) did YOUR job as an American citizen paying to protect YOUR constitutional rights.
You ought to find them and thank them.
They ought to find and thank them (but they probably won't)
The wealthy pay only on average 16% of their income in taxes and the middle classes pay 23%.
It's time to make you pay your fair share.
It was Saint Ronald (Reagan) who DOUBLED Social Security levies on our payckecks, way back in 1983, when competent demographers (there were plenty back then) told him about the baby boom bulge coming down the pike 30 years hence. So for most of my working life I contributed that levy that was to guarantee me my "Social Security". I didn't steal it, I didn't fudge it, I PAID INTO IT, PAYCHECK AFTER PAYCHECK ,YEAR AFTER YEAR. And now Rep. Ryan has the nerve to imply that I AM A FREELOADER? I suggest that HE IS the freeloader. After just one or two terms as a congress critter he will HAVE A PENSION FOR LIFE! Is THAT fair? The Ronald Reagan crowd was counting on us oldsters forgetting that FACT. Mr. Ryan, I hope your mother and grandmother are covered by the system they probably paid into. As for you, not so sure.
They didn't address this before the last elections because they knew they were in trouble. Just as they didn't pass a budget and now they criticize the "Republicans" .. that's as worn out as "Bush did it" .
The EXPECTATION was that the already dead would subsidize those unfortunate souls who had outlived their ability to provide for themselves economically.
Current life expectancy in the US is 78.3 years. Tha's a hell of a difference. Things have gotta change.
In 1983, the life expectancy at birth was 74.6 years in the US.
In 2010 it is 78.3.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0102.pdf
Deal with facts, not guesses.
Yet all we get to hear about is Ryan this and Ryan that.
To the Repub party I say be careful what you wish for, and, beware the siren call of your own narrow ideological rhetoric, lest you experience a backlash of epic proportion, and of your own making based on a colossal political miscalculation of the sensibility and gulability of the American people. The American people are not fooled by your simplistic prescription of cut, cut, cut, that benefits the rich and deeply hurts the poor and the middle class. Beware the backlash, for it will surely come!
It's too bad Democrats, repeat, DEMOCRATS, are fawning all over Ryan's budget bill
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/17/mark-warner-gang-six-social-security-taxes_n_850211.html
Ryan was a legislative aide to former senator (now governor) Sam Brownback of Kansas, a candidiate for prsident in 2008 who, during a GOP primary debate raised his hand when asked by the moderator if he did not believe in evolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZCl2bi-JDY&feature=youtu.be
Someone tell Ryan that the millionaires and billionaire already have enough.
When the disparity becomes as great as Ryan's plan would make it, revolution is in the air.
Stop Ryan before he kills the elderly, the infirm and our children with his prepotserous "budget" plan.