Paul Ryan's budget proposal would spread pain widely

[cal04]

By Michael Hiltzik
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120815,0,1949780.column

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Within hours of the Wisconsin congressman's anointing as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, the budget plan's salient features were being widely publicized: It would deliver a handsome tax cut to the richest Americans while eviscerating the programs and services the rest of the country depends on. These include healthcare services, banking and clean water regulations, road repair and education assistance.

Yet all the discussion has overlooked the real damage the Ryan budget would do to an important segment of the American public. We're not talking about the very poor and the near poor. Their lives would be made immeasurably worse, to be sure, by a budget that would shrink Medicaid and force cutbacks in food stamp, educational and law enforcement services, among so many other things. Ryan at least pays lip service to maintaining the national safety net, ineffective as his proposals to do so may be.

But the middle class would be destroyed. The Ryan budget's impact on middle-income Americans comes in many forms, some of them exceedingly disingenuous. Let's look at a few.

(snip)
The more insidious assault on the middle class comes from program cuts. Most of the commentary on Ryan's budget has focused on his master plan for Medicare and Medicaid, both of which he would gut. But it's a mistake to think the burden would be shouldered exclusively, or even chiefly, by the poor.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120815,0,1949780.column