Thursday, June 2, 2011

The Ryan Repugnican budget is NOT about the deficit!

[Photo from here.]

One of the things we must remember about Repugnicans:  They never mean what they say, and they never say what they mean.

The Repugnicans have engaged in class warfare.  It's the rich against the rest of us.  At the moment, the rich are winning.

The infamous budget proposed by the Repugnican representative in the House, Paul Ryan (R. Wis.), is not about reducing the deficit!  Just as the recent brouhaha in Ryan's home state made clear that the budget proposed by Governor Walker had nothing to do with the state deficit, but rather was about union-busting and establishing corporate power at the expense of the people of Wisconsin, so Ryan's budget, while having no impact on the federal deficit, will commence to fulfill the Repugnican wet-dream of so many years - to rid our country of the safety net for its most vulnerable citizens and create a permanent class of elites to rule over the rest of us.

Joshua Holland, writing for AlterNet, details the essence of Ryan's devastating plan in his article, "How Fraudulent Is the GOP Budget Plan?  It Wouldn't Even Make a Dent In the Deficit!"

It is so radical, says Holland, that "According to an analysis by the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the plan would slash all public spending other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by almost three-quarters by 2050.  And because the 'budget does not envision defense cuts in real terms,' what this means is that 'most of the rest of the federal government outside of health care, Social Security, and defense would cease to exist.'"

Holland continues:  "And it's not just a matter of bait-and-switch; the entire proposal is a fraud.  Just consider this:  while selling their plan to the public as a 'serious' and 'bold' attempt to reduce the federal deficit, Republicans are overstating how much it would cut the budget gap by ten-fold."

In other words, what the Republicans claim about their budget is not in line with reality!  And not only have they claimed reductions which are invalid from the start, but they've made several math "errors" to make the budget look better than it is.  For example, one "math error ... exaggerated how much we'd save in interest payments by $230 billion over the next decade - a number significantly higher than the amount of deficit reduction they'd get out of the plan."

The worst  of it, as Holland notes, is that "while the plan's deficit reduction is largely fantasy, the pain it would impose on working Americans is very real.  Almost two-thirds of the $4.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years come from programs that help those with lower incomes."

There is much more.  The main thrust of Holland's article is that, as usual, under any Repugnican plan, the rich get richer and the rest of us get screwed!  Royally.

Now, the original tea party folks didn't like getting royally screwed by the royalty in England.  Our tea party folks have been conned by our "royalty" here at home.  The Koch brothers, for example, operating in the shadows, have garnered an army of middle- and lower-income people to work against their own best interests.

Anyone who is not a multi-millionaire and votes Repugnican has a death-wish.

This is a class war and it's just beginning. 

Read all of Holland's excellent article here.

2 comments:

Charlene said...

First, employers and employees pay via payroll deductions from the first day a person takes a job, into the fund to pay SS and Medicare. The deal made was you pay a little every payday and when you get old; you'll get SS payments and health care. This is not entitlement in the same sense as welfare and food stamps.

Who took money out of the big old fund to use for all kinds of purposes for which it was not intended?

Currently tax levels are less than they were under the great snake oil salesman Regan. It's criminal. Put the taxes back to what they were under Clinton. Stop government support of industries that make profits that can only be described as usury. I use that word because although it refers to interest these industries are getting "free" support from our taxes and then making huge profits from using the money and then not paying fair taxes on those profits.

Lowell said...

Hi Charlene! Thank you for commenting. And you are 100% correct!

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