NYT: The House Budget Disaster

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/the-house-budget-disaster.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

The House Budget Disaster

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
MARCH 18, 2015


If the budget resolution released on Tuesday by House Republicans is a road map to a “Stronger America,” as its title proclaims, it’s hard to imagine what the path to a diminished America would look like.

The plan’s deep cuts land squarely on the people who most need help: the poor and the working class. The plan also would turn Medicare into a system of unspecified subsidies to buy private insurance by the time Americans who are now 56 years old become eligible. And it would strip 16.4 million people of health insurance by repealing the Affordable Care Act (the umpteenth attempt by Republicans to do so since the law was enacted in 2010).

House Republicans would increase defense financing by bolstering a contingency fund that is not subject to existing budget caps, while insisting on adherence to caps or even deeper cuts to nondefense spending on education, the environment, law enforcement, medical research and other so-called discretionary programs. At the same time, the plan proposes deep cuts to “mandatory” nondefense spending, which includes Medicaid, federal pensions, food stamps, farm supports and tax credits for the working poor. The details of these cuts are vague, but the Medicaid cuts alone would inevitably fall on millions of children in low-income families and millions of older people (mostly women) in nursing homes, groups that are the program’s main beneficiaries.

Over all, at least two-thirds of the $5 trillion in cuts over 10 years would come from programs that focus on low- and modest-income Americans, even though such programs account for less than one-fourth of all federal program costs.

Republicans say the cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit and balance the budget, but annual budget deficits have fallen steeply during the Obama years. Going forward, there is both a need and an opportunity for the government to spend in ways that create jobs and lay a foundation for future growth, say, by investing in education, science and infrastructure. And even if cutting the budget were urgent — which it is not — the House Republican plan ignores the most sensible, equitable cuts.

For example, it doesn’t propose to reduce the deficit by closing tax loopholes that drain the budget of more than $1 trillion a year and that overwhelmingly benefit the highest-income households, including special low tax rates on investment income.

The absence of tax increases in the presence of deep spending cuts is a recipe for increasing both poverty and inequality. But the budget plan blithely predicts that its policy proposals will bolster economic growth and increase tax revenues by some $140 billion over the next 10 years, leading to budget surpluses.

House Republicans are sticking to their tired themes of spending cuts, no matter the need or consequences, and tax cuts above all. Senate Republicans, whose budget resolution is scheduled to be unveiled Wednesday, are not expected to challenge the House approach in any major way.

[cyberswede]

1. I sincerely hope voters start to catch on. nt

[blkmusclmachine]

2. What does Diebold/SES think???