How Paul Ryan's Budget Proposals Screw the Middle Class

[jtown1123]

Here's some highlights how Paul Ryan's proposals dismantle Medicare and place Social Security in a fast track system for cuts (unprecedented) from NCPSSM.


Eliminate Medicare and replace it with a privatized system where seniors get vouchers (however, Ryan’s new poll-tested language is now “premium assistance payments”) to pay for health care. In truth, we prefer to call them “coupons” since they really offer about that much assistance because the whole idea is that the voucher will never actually cover the true costs of healthcare. That’s where the government saves money. Under this scheme, taxpayers will pay insurers to provide less coverage while beneficiaries pick up more of the tab. Congressional Quarterly describes it this way:

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reviewed an earlier version of the plan and found it probably would lead to increased costs or reduced benefits for beneficiaries. “First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis,” according to the CBO’s Nov. 17 analysis. “Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.”

Social Security reforms will be fast-tracked. While the legislative language of Ryan’s plan doesn’t propose specific cuts (allowing them to claim “we’re not cutting Social Security” before an election year) this legislation does create a new triggering mechanism and fast-tracked process for Social Security cuts which is unprecedented in the history of Congressional budget resolutions. The trigger language in this bill is designed to circumvent the current process in order to mandate fast-tracked reforms through Congress. And since this bill’s summary also rules out revenue changes, such as the most popular option for Social Security reform, raising the payroll tax cap so that the wealthier pay their fair share, what’s left? Benefit cuts. In fact, the Ryan plan’s summary endorses cutting future Social Security benefits for everyone who is earning more than $22,000 a year right now (while they’re working) – which is the vast majority of Americans.


Won’t pay back the Trust Fund. Rep. Ryan’s budget summary denies the federal government’s responsibility to repay the $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund, built up by payroll contributions from generations of working Americans. This Budget plan states: “Any value in the balances in the Social Security trust fund is derived from dubious government accounting.”

THE REST: http://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/?p=1695

[sinkingfeeling]

1. So Rep. Ryan doesn't believe the US government must honor their debts? I guess then all of us

little people shouldn't be bothered with honoring ours.

[warrior1]

2. his proposals

are dead in the water.

[bullwinkle428]

3. Doesn't the Ryan plan also drop top marginal tax rates from 35% to 25%?

I could swear I heard this yesterday when NPR was discussing it, yet there's nary a mention of this from the main beltway press.

[subterranean]

4. Yes, it does.

Tax cuts for the rich, austerity for everyone else.

[jtown1123]

5. Yes. What a turd sandwich.

[alp227]

6. Harold Meyerson: "Who’s hurt by Paul Ryan’s budget proposal"

If it does nothing else, the budget that House Republicans unveiled Tuesday provides the first real Republican program for the 21st century, and it is this:

Repeal the 20th century.

Republicans have never particularly warmed to the American social contract that governed most of the past hundred years. Its central elements, enacted during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, assumed a level of collective national responsibility for the well-being of the elderly and children, the two groups who could not benefit directly from employment, through such programs as Social Security, Medicare, funding for schools and for college grants and loans.

The logic behind these programs wasn’t simply humanitarian. It was also economic: Bolstering the purchasing power of the elderly increased economic activity and enabled the adult children of the elderly to invest more in their own children. Enabling more people to get good educations straight through college created a more productive workforce. A similar dual logic — both humanitarian and Keynesian — informed the programs that aided the poor and unemployed, such as Medicaid and food stamps.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whos_hurt_by_paul_ryans_budget_proposal/2011/04/05/AFfP7PlC_story.html