CBO Rains on Paul Ryan's Parade

The CBO was asked by Paul Ryan to analyze the GOP's 2012 budget. If you remember Paul Krugman's article on the 2022 Medicare Crisis, you'll get the drift of the CBO's analysis. If we did nothing,the national debt will be about 60% of GDP in ten years. If we do everything Ryan wants,the national debt will be about 70% of GDP. In other words, David Brooks, who believes Ryan is actually serious, is not a serious person either.

The CBO's analysis is that the GOP's spending cuts would be outpaced by deficit-increasing tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. This sounds awfully familiar.

The CBO points out the obvious that the disabled and elderly will incur much higher out of pocket costs for health care under the Ryan Plan. Currently, the elderly pay about 25% of what costs would be in the individual private market. Under Ryan, the costs would jump to 68% of private insurance.

The CBO does note that by liquidating Medicare, the national debt scenrio would improve somewhat in the Ryan plan after 2022. And the population would be rapidly depleted by dying seniors.

But you could have gotten to a better place by doing nothing.

That was brought to you courtesy of TalkingPointsMemo.

Washington Monthly looks on the cheery side of the Ryan Plan. Well, they looked at the Heritage Foundation's analysis. Now remember Heritage believed that the stimulus package would absolutely fail to create jobs--it created or saved 3 million. They believed that the Bush Tax Cuts would nearly eliminate the national debt and vastly increase government revenues. Today, we know these tax cuts added $5 trillion to the national debt.

But the Heritage Foundation said that if you do everything Paul Ryan suggests, unemployment would be reduced to 4% by 2015. Cool! And by 2021, the unemployment would drop to a stunning 2.8% by 2021.

And that's achieved by taking all public investment out of the economy. That's magical thinking at its boldest. There is not a single qualified economist in this country that believes you can get anywhere on unemployment without significant public investment in the economy.

As we head toward midnight, rumors abound that Harry Reid and John Boehner are locked in a room trying to reach an agreement on the 2011 budget. John Boehner told the freshman Republicans today that if they keep holding out it gives him more leverage in negotiations. Washington Monthly is also alerting people that Boehner is one of the weakest Speakers in modern memory and has virtually no control over his caucus. Meanwhile Little Ricky Cantor says that there will be a government shut-down.