More Problems with Paul Ryan's Plan

The White House came out swinging against Paul Ryan's Budget plans,pointing out its vastly negative impact on seniors, the disabled,children, minorities and the underprivileged, while increasing tax benefits for the wealthy and corporations. Max Bacchus zeroed in on the implications of Paul Ryan's plan to eliminate Medicare and modify Medicare, saying it would create uncertainty for seniors and deprive them of needed health care.

When Paul Ryan unveiled his "Blueprint for America" this past summer, I was already bothered by his math--let alone his ideology. Let's just take his claims about how much the national debt will be cut--if you believe that is the paramount issue of the day. He's talking about cutting roughly $5 trillion over ten years. Earlier the CBO had tried to price out Ryan's Blueprint and found that it generated debt forever and that it only got close to a balanced budget in year 40. Their conclusion to paraphrase their economic language was that Ryan's Plan was a recipe to make the United States a banana republic forever.

Let's just take one claim of Ryan's. He says in his budget that repealing the affordable health care act would save $1.3 trillion--in other words, this is one-fourth of his total debt cutting in his entire project. Unfortunately, it's dead wrong. The CBO has suggested that repeal would actually add over $200 billion at least to the national debt. Others have suggested that it would increase the debt by $400-500 billion. Ryan's error here is not a rounding mistake but in ideology.

Matt Iglesias wondered today where Ryan got his numbers from because he has made it clear that he will not accept real numbers from the CBO. Ryan admitted much of the work had been done by the Heritage Foundation. So,let's see what last budget contribution they made and what were the results. The Heritage Foundation sold the Bush Tax Cuts. Their policy papers said that these tax cuts would lead to an economic boom. They estimated that about 6.5 million jobs would be created as a result. The real number was about 1.1 million, a record already surpassed by President Obama. The result of the Bush tax cuts were no job growth,the median income in the country fell, both private and public debt exploded and the economy crashed. So why would you believe the Ryan plan when we know the result of the authors from before?

Paul Ryan also has a slight credibility problem. He said that the Affordable Care Act would result in ten years of tax increases and over $500 billion being raided from Medicare. He was the point man for the Republican campaign line last year that Obama planned to cut $500 billion from Medicare--not cut that much waste but from services. As a result, that's how we saw that number appear in the Karl Rove Crossroads America ads against every democratic incumbent.

When I heard the news today about the plan to abolish Medicare and Medicaid, I was too stunned to realize how Ryan's Plan is beyond awful. His "voucher"--soon we will all have vouchers for the Koch company store--does not provide any determined medical services for seniors. In other words, Medicare, which stipulates a range of services, procedures and caps costs, would be replaced by something to be determined by the health insurance industry. And, in the spirit of deregulation,Ryan does not spell out even the basic care such a system must provide. In other words, his "voucher" might not take care of any of the illnesses suffered by our seniors and could cover virtually nothing. It's a total utter scam just to make seniors another profit center for the health insurance industry. The actual details of his plan are something to behold. The democrats would really be justified in calling this plan--the republican Death Panels.

What Ryan also did not specify were his cuts to Social Security. No one paid this any mind because he said that would be discussed at a later time. The initial impression was that he had punted on this because of its sensitivity. In reality,Ryan and his colleagues want to revist "privatizing" Social Security. This was clear in last week's statements by Ricky Cantor, who said that in his ideal America Social Security would cease to exist.

The Ryan Plan would also increase Congress' pay by $14,000 per year. But government workers would have a pay freeze until 2015. I have not done the figures on how many thousand government workers will be retired,fired and laid off. But the number is large.

The good thing for President Obama is that the leading Republican presidential contenders today endorsed the Ryan Plan. So for all of you who believe there is no difference between the candidates now you have them in Technicolor, Imax and 3-D.

Well not every Presidential candidate endorses it. Ron Paul was interviewed today. Yes, he said we have to deal with the debt issue in terms of trillions. But he didn't think the first thing you touch is social programs for the neediest. Instead, he said we would make much greater progress if we dismantled the military-industrial complex and we ended corporatism. Paul argued that we have to end all subsidies to corporations and close the tax loopholes. And he blasted the influence of corporate special interests on the whole process.

On today's budget mess, he thought there would be no government shut down. He also pointed out that the differences between $30 and 50 billion being discussed is easily covered by cutting programs to build the infrastructure in Afghanistan. And not Planned Parenthood and PBS and all these little things.

If I have the stomach, I'll deal more with the Ryan Plan in the future. But it is a glitzy salespiitch for snake oil