As we look at the impending government shutdown and the rangling over the still pending 2011 budget, Congressman Paul Ryan - who has been granted by the House GOP the singular power to approve or disapprove a budget - we have a proposal for spending and taxation that is both cruel, unusual and a horrible joke that punishing the elderly and poor while granting yet another giant tax kick-back to the rich and corporations.
Ryan's Budget proposals here are entirely familiar as they seem to be competely recycled from his previously released "Roadmap" which was scored by the CBO as follows:
The age of eligibility for Medicare would increase incrementally from 65 (for people born before 1956), as it is under current law, to 69 67 years and 6 months for people born in 2022 and later. Starting in 2021, new enrollees would no longer receive coverage through the current program but, instead, would be given a voucher with which to purchase private health insurance.
Basically his plan would change Medicare Part-A into Medicare Advantage where beneficiaries would receive Health Care Stamps to purchase their care, and just like Medicare Part-D if the costs of the carrier happen to exceed what they've been allotted they would have to make up the difference out of their own pocket or else simply forgo care.
Real people who've actually been under the Medicare Part-D system as implemented by Republicans know what this means. This is Health Care Rationing.
On top of this while Medicare would be converted to a Voucher system and Medicare would turned into Block Grants (removing the requirement for Governors like Jan Brewer, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich and Scott Walker to actually spend that money on people who need care), the tax code would be radically modified to cut taxes for the rich by 10% (From 35% to 25%) but at the same time taxes for the poor and vulnerable would be greatly increased.
• First of all: We cannot rest satisfied with permanently high unemployment. America must begin to create new businesses and jobs. We can begin with a pro-growth tax reform. The Roadmap proposes a simple two-tier low-rate personal income tax system: 10% on the first $100,000 of income for couples ($50,000 for singles) and 25% above that. It abolishes the Alternative Minimum Tax, and nearly all loopholes and credits, except for generous personal and family deductions. Taxpayers can either file under the current tax code or this simplified code. Our uncompetitive corporate income tax code will be replaced by a simple 8.5% business consumption tax and investments will be expensed immediately. The Roadmap creates incentives to foster job opportunities and economic growth, while sustaining the revenues to meet our priorities.
As Ryan suggests this he ignores the fact that the Affordable Care Act actually extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 20 Years and actually put Medicare into Surplus starting in 2014.
In addition the CBO reported that if not for the temporary extension of the Bush Tax Kick Backs last December the Deficit would have been reduced by well over 50% by 2014.
In Ryan's original proposal tax rates for the rich would be dropped to 25% while taxes for the poor would be 10% and all current deductions would be removed which would dramatically increase the rate paid by the poor and decrease the rate paid by the rich by 10%. We now already know 57% of U.S Corporations including giants such as GE, Bank of America, Citigroup and Exxon/Mobil used Tax Kick-Backs to Pay Nothing to the Federal Government.
What we're seeing is the most extreme version of Reverse Robin-Hood to date. Take from the poor, by cutting their safety net with a machete and increasing their taxes then shovelling all those funds directly to the rich who don't need it and have clearly shown they're far more likely to invest if overseas than create American jobs or prosperity. All this to cut $4 Trilion over ten years, well y'know what else would reduce the deficit by $4 Trillion over the same time period? Letting the Bush Tax Kick Backs Expire.
There are ways to save in spending and do so without reduce the quality or effectiveness of services. That's what President Bill Clinton assigned Vice President Gore to accomplish with his Reinventing Government program. That program reduced the size of government by 15% and ultimately brought our budget into surplus until Bush gave that money away with his cuts.
More recently the GAO has suggested $Billions in potential savings by removing ineffective and duplicative programs.
"Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services," the report says. In one example, the report found that if the Defense Department were to make "broader restructuring" of its "military health care system" it "could result in annual savings of up to $460 million."
Even more scathing is the duplication investigators found in the nation's biodefense efforts, with the report essentially saying that the billions of dollars spent annually is the responsibility of no one individual and that there is no plan for post-attack coordination, this on the heels of a 2010 federal commission finding that gave the U.S. a "failing grade" in its prevention measures.
Read more: http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/...
Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress has proposed a progressive budget plan that could protect seniors and our most vulnerable citizens while saving as much as $3.2 Trillion over the Next Decade.
1. Rein In The Military Budget: Neither the president’s budget or the House CR cuts the overall level of defense spending. In fact, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s request for the Pentagon budget is a whopping $553 billion — “the largest request ever” by the Pentagon and the largest adjusted for inflation since World War II. CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has laid out $1 trillion in defense reductions that can be made over the next 10 years by phasing out outdated programs and resizing our military. This comes out to roughly $100 billion a year, which is approximately how much funding is being proposed to be cut from the Pell Grant program.
2. Reduce Or Eliminate Subsidies To Big Agribusiness: The federal government “paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.” “Just ten percent of America’s largest and richest farms collect almost three-fourths” of these subsidies. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has proposed — as a part of her progressive deficit reduction plan — a fifty percent cut in federal direct support for agriculture, which would save $7.5 billion in 2015.
3. Reduce Or Eliminate Wasteful Tax Expenditures: The CAP paper “Cracking the Code: A Closer Look at Tax Expenditure Spending” notes that “special credits, deductions, exclusions, exemptions, and preferential tax rates provide more than $1 trillion in subsidies intended to support public objectives,” yet are ineffective and should be reduced or eliminated. Eliminating this tax expenditure could save $100 billion, for example.
4. Enact A Financial Transactions Tax: A “0.25 percent tax on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other Wall Street financial instruments” would do little to nothing to reduce commerce or productivity but would generate “between $50 billion and $150 billion annually,” according to a CAP analysis.
5. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices: One of the main drivers of the growing U.S. budget deficit is health care costs. While there are a number of things that can be done to streamline the efficiency of our health care system, like introducing a public option or even moving towards a Medicare-for-all system, one policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.
There is simply no need to do this as viciously and cruelly as does Ryan's budget.
Just we've seen with Scott Walker this is a ideological battle and the facts are not what he and his Union and Worker hating band would like.
It's time we stood up and made sure Congressmen Ryan knows what the Real American People think and feel.
Dial Liberally.
Offices of Rep Ryan CONSTITUENT HOTLINE: 1-888-909-RYAN (7926)
Washington, DC office
1233 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3031
Fax: (202) 225-3393
Kenosha office
5455 Sheridan Road, Suite 125
Kenosha, WI 53140
Phone: (262) 654-1901
Fax: (262) 654-2156
Vyan