Ryan’s Budget Plan Is Ridiculous, But It Could Shift the Debate

[abelenkpe]

Ryan’s Budget Plan Is Ridiculous, But It Could Shift the Debate

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/04/05/ryans-budget-plan-is-ridiculous-but-it-could-shift-the-debate/
Ezra Klein has helpfully assembled a summary of the Ryan GOP budget. As you can see, while everyone’s talking about the privatization of Medicare and block-grant of Medicaid, there are plenty of other pieces worth discussing here even without any of that. Ryan would reduce discretionary spending to pre-2008 levels and freeze it for five years. He would repeal the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank entirely. He would block grant the food stamp program, giving a set amount of money indexed to inflation, regardless of economic conditions. He would eliminate all changes to Pell Grants, kicking them back to 2008 levels. And he would use the savings from all that to make the Bush tax cuts effectively permanent, but actually do worse than that, by changing the tax code to lower the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25% and making up the revenue on the poor.

So this is a pretty pathetic budget. And it also happens to be a complete fiction.

(snip)

But I’d rather look at observable reality. With respect to the current budget debate, Republicans initially called for $33 billion in cuts, and then upped the number. Democrats eventually met them “halfway” by… offering $33 billion in cuts. Republicans said no, wanting more, and now Democrats are positioning themselves as the serious people by offering an imitation of the Republican budget. You can see exactly the same dynamic at work here. The Ryan deficit reduction plan goes beyond the Bowles-Simpson cat food commission plan. So you can absolutely see the Democrats counter-offer with… Bowles-Simspon.

(more at link)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HOpe this is wrong wrong wrong...whaddya think?

[aquart]

1. The only appropriate response is NO.

[global1]

2. Choreographed - Orchestrated - Are We Being Played?......nt

[emulatorloo]

3. I am pretty sure one of the Democrats "compromises" was to make deeper cuts to the Defense budget.

Which the Republicans were not happy about.

[rfranklin]

4. Yes ...nt

[BanzaiBonnie]

5. Absolutely

Roll back the Reagan tax cuts.

[NothingRight]

6. You are dead on

When you review the numbers individually on each of the issues addressed, it is clear this is not a true proposal that would have any chance of passing.

But look at how far it moves the bar to start the discussion.

This is an opportunity for progressives to attack this plan, line item by line item. Point out where the logic is completely flawed, then present the progressive plan that fills the hole their plan claimed to fill.

The key is not to just debunk the entire thing as a collective failure. To win this battle each item has to be systematically torn down, with facts, historical data, current trends, etc. Those are not hard to come by for any of us, so they really should be easy for our elected leaders with full staffs of people to do research for them.

If you click on the link below, you will see how I was able to break down the simple economic statistics comparing the Reagan Administration (the conservative messiah) and the Clinton Administration (one that actually did the job it was hired to do).

http://wp.me/p1mIkk-cR