Tom Jigme Wheat
2011-04-11 23:04:56 UTC
Paul Ryan wants to lower the income tax rates on the top income
earners from 35% to 25%. This will cost the government 2.9 trillion
dollars in revenues over the next decade. So now Ryan wants to cut
Medicare and Medicaid to help pay for it. His budget will increase
seniors on medicare, out of pocket costs by 6000 dollars a year. For
those seniors on medicaid, who are in nursing homes, its a real
possibility that Medicaid would not be able to cover the cost of their
care. Also his plan would lead to higher taxes for the middle class.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/ta040711.html
Think Again: 'Brave, Radical, and Smart'
SOURCE: AP/Susan Walsh
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg praises Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget as
“brave, radical, and smart.” The New York Times's David Brooks said it
"set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this
discussion."
By Eric Alterman | April 7, 2011
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a
quarrel.
- Robert Frost
It’s a truism that conservatives are tougher than liberals. It’s also
true. But the odd thing about this phenomenon is that while right-
wingers are, indeed, tougher, nastier, and more dedicated to achieving
their appointed tasks than their liberal counterparts, they get a
great deal of help from members of the so-called liberal media who are
always praising their courage—which is usually mustered to find a new
way to screw the poor and middle class on behalf of the wealthy.
Consider Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan. The New York Times's
David Brooks, who stands anointed as the most influential pundit of
the Obama era, and is frequently accepting kudos for his refusal to
kowtow to conservative dogma, pronounced that the document “set the
standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this
discussion...This budget tackles just about every politically risky
issue with brio and guts...Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both
hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same.”
Joe Scarborough treated the document similarly. Scarborough is a
former Republican congressman who is treated to 15 hours of
programming each week on MSNBC, the cable network that allegedly
offsets the rabidly right-wing Fox. At the end of his program, his
executive producer, Chris Licht, said in Scarborough's earpiece of
Ryan, "I'm in love." The New York Times''s Andrew Ross Sorkin was also
impressed. He responded: "Give the man credit for putting out a plan,
when no one else would, frankly." And Mika Brzezinski, who is supposed
to be the liberal on this (liberal network) program, told Ryan, "I've
always said, I really like him.”
Weirdest of all, perhaps, was the confused cheerleading offered up by
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg under the headline “Good Plan!” followed by the
adjectives “brave, radical, and smart.” Generously granting that
“Democrats are within their rights to point out the negative effects
of Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the
poor,” along with the fact that Ryan “was not specific about many of
his cuts,” he nevertheless thinks liberals should embrace the plan
because “it’s hard to make a principled liberal case for the program
[Medicare] in its current form.”
To which one can only respond with: “Say what?” Does Weisberg really
think that the problem with liberals these days is that they don’t pay
enough attention to principle? Are Koch-backed conservatives with
money flowing through a post-Citzens United political landscape like a
tsunami beating liberals because the latter are insufficiently
principled? Is Weisberg living on the same planet as the rest of us?
This is an old problem. Weisberg is an alumnus of The New Republic,
which his old boss, Mike Kinsley, used to joke ought to have been
renamed “Even the New Republic…” because it was always endorsing right-
wing Reaganite programs while pretending to speak for liberals.
Weisberg has done his old colleagues like Charles Krauthammer, Fred
Barnes, and Morton Kondracke one better here, however, by getting on
board with a plan so heartless toward the poor and indigent that even
Ronald Regan and George W. Bush never dared propose anything like it.
Weisberg appears to know a bit of this. He admits that the “brave,
radical, and smart” plan he so admires is full of “sleight-of-hand
tricks” and would not actually come close to eliminating the deficit
in the coming decade, “leaving $400 billion in annual deficits as far
as the eye can see.”
Weisberg attributes this to yet another massive tax cut for the
wealthy, a goal he endorses, though he does not go quite as far as
Ryan in calling for a top rate of 25 percent. Apparently the fact that
the United States has just experienced 40 years of purposeful transfer
of wealth from working stiffs to the extremely wealthy—the share of
total wealth for the top 1 percent has increased from 8 percent during
the 1960s to more than 20 percent in 2011 with wages for the average
worker remaining flat during that period— is insufficient.
So too, the fact, that, as Jesse Drucker reports in Bloomberg-Business
Week:
For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the
effective federal income tax rate fell from almost 30 percent in 1995
to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the
approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of
taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29
percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true,
but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or
so.
Yet for an "Even the New Republic" liberal like Slate's Weisberg, this
is insufficiently generous to the extremely wealthy. Together with
Ryan, he thinks they need more.
And he recognizes even more evasions in the “brave, radical, and
smart” plan, including Rep. Ryan’s refusal to spell out the cuts in
domestic programs he assumes will be achieved through “caps,” as well
as “which deductions and tax subsidies he'd eliminate to pay for these
lower rates.” What’s more, his economic projections are a “a supply-
side fantasy. His anti-bailout rhetoric is silly pandering,” but, one
presumes, “brave, radical, and smart” fantasizing and pandering.
Here are some more “brave, radical, and smart” details of the plan
Weisberg presumably did not have room to praise:
■The Ryan plan, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Robert
Greenstein notes, "would get about two-thirds of its more than $4
trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from programs that serve people
of limited means…Actual program cuts produce net savings of $4.322
trillion. Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at
least $2.9 trillion—or about two-thirds—of this amount. The $2.9
trillion includes the following three categories of cuts: $2.17
trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care...$350
billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans
(other than Medicaid)...$400 billion in cuts in low-income
discretionary programs.”
■Michael Linden, Associate Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the
Center for American Progress, writes, "The rate cut at the top, of
course, benefits only those in the top brackets (the richest two
percent of Americans), but to pay for it, Ryan says he will 'broaden
the tax base.' Broadening the tax base means removing some tax
expenditures that currently benefit the middle class.” Ryan's
vagueness is probably deliberate, "since any detailed description of
his ideas for tax 'reform' would reveal a massive tax hike for the
middle class."
■Washington Post fact-checker columnist Glen Kessler adds that Rep.
Ryan relies on the Congressional Budget Office to vouch for his plan,
but he appears to ignore CBO estimates that a repeal of the health
care law would lead to an increase in the deficit. A substantial part
of his claimed deficit reduction—$1.4 trillion over the next 10 years—
comes from repealing the health care law. Even Alice Rivlin, whose
surname accounts for the “Rivlin” in “Ryan-Rivlin,” explained to
Garance Franke-Ruta: “There is no way we can control medical spending
at the inflation level. It’s going to rise faster than that.”
Moreover, “as the Congressional Budget Office noted, a lot of what
Rep. Ryan’s budget does is shift costs from the federal budget to
someone else’s budget: Medicaid’s costs moves to the states, and then
when the states cut it, to the people who need it, or to their
families.”
■Rep. Ryan’s budget estimates are very optimistic, report Jim
Tankersley and Katy O’Donnell at the National Journal: “If Rep. Paul
Ryan’s newly unveiled 2012 budget is signed into law, this is what
Ryan’s economic forecasters say will happen: The unemployment rate
will plunge by 2.5 percentage points. The still-sinking housing market
will roar back in a brand new boom. The federal government will
collect $100 billion more in income tax revenues than it otherwise
would have. And that’s just in the first year. By 2015, the
forecasters say, unemployment will fall to 4 percent. By 2021, it will
be a nearly unprecedented 2.8 percent.”
■Finally, seniors would pay much more for Medicare under Rep. Ryan’s
proposal, report Julie Appleby, Mary Agnes Carey, and Laurie McGinley
at Kaiser Health News: “Seniors and the disabled would pay sharply
more for their Medicare coverage under a new plan by House Republicans
aimed at curbing the nation’s growing deficit, a Congressional Budget
Office analysis shows. For example, by 2030, under the plan, typical
65-year-olds would be required to pay 68 percent of the total cost of
their coverage, which includes premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-
pocket costs, according to CBO. That compares with the 25 percent they
would pay under current law, CBO said. The GOP budget proposal also
would raise the eligibility age for the politically popular program—
and repeal big chunks of the health care overhaul law approved by
Congress last year.”
In fact, the only real value of Rep. Ryan’s plan is that, like
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on the right of public workers
to bargain collectively, it clarifies the long-term agenda of the
conservative class war that right-wing intellectuals and operatives
have been planning and waging against poor and middle-class Americans
for nearly half a century now. That the mainstream media is peopled
with so many influential “liberals” willing to call this agenda
“brave, radical, and smart” and instruct genuine liberals to endorse
it on principle tells us a great deal about why this vicious assault
on what was once the American social compact has been so successful so
far.
Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a columnist for The
Nation, Moment, and The Daily Beast. His newest book is Kabuki
Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama.
thomaswheat1975
keywords: paul ryan, gop, republican tax cut 2.9 trillion
medicare medicaid cuts
earners from 35% to 25%. This will cost the government 2.9 trillion
dollars in revenues over the next decade. So now Ryan wants to cut
Medicare and Medicaid to help pay for it. His budget will increase
seniors on medicare, out of pocket costs by 6000 dollars a year. For
those seniors on medicaid, who are in nursing homes, its a real
possibility that Medicaid would not be able to cover the cost of their
care. Also his plan would lead to higher taxes for the middle class.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/04/ta040711.html
Think Again: 'Brave, Radical, and Smart'
SOURCE: AP/Susan Walsh
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg praises Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget as
“brave, radical, and smart.” The New York Times's David Brooks said it
"set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this
discussion."
By Eric Alterman | April 7, 2011
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a
quarrel.
- Robert Frost
It’s a truism that conservatives are tougher than liberals. It’s also
true. But the odd thing about this phenomenon is that while right-
wingers are, indeed, tougher, nastier, and more dedicated to achieving
their appointed tasks than their liberal counterparts, they get a
great deal of help from members of the so-called liberal media who are
always praising their courage—which is usually mustered to find a new
way to screw the poor and middle class on behalf of the wealthy.
Consider Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan. The New York Times's
David Brooks, who stands anointed as the most influential pundit of
the Obama era, and is frequently accepting kudos for his refusal to
kowtow to conservative dogma, pronounced that the document “set the
standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this
discussion...This budget tackles just about every politically risky
issue with brio and guts...Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both
hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same.”
Joe Scarborough treated the document similarly. Scarborough is a
former Republican congressman who is treated to 15 hours of
programming each week on MSNBC, the cable network that allegedly
offsets the rabidly right-wing Fox. At the end of his program, his
executive producer, Chris Licht, said in Scarborough's earpiece of
Ryan, "I'm in love." The New York Times''s Andrew Ross Sorkin was also
impressed. He responded: "Give the man credit for putting out a plan,
when no one else would, frankly." And Mika Brzezinski, who is supposed
to be the liberal on this (liberal network) program, told Ryan, "I've
always said, I really like him.”
Weirdest of all, perhaps, was the confused cheerleading offered up by
Slate’s Jacob Weisberg under the headline “Good Plan!” followed by the
adjectives “brave, radical, and smart.” Generously granting that
“Democrats are within their rights to point out the negative effects
of Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the
poor,” along with the fact that Ryan “was not specific about many of
his cuts,” he nevertheless thinks liberals should embrace the plan
because “it’s hard to make a principled liberal case for the program
[Medicare] in its current form.”
To which one can only respond with: “Say what?” Does Weisberg really
think that the problem with liberals these days is that they don’t pay
enough attention to principle? Are Koch-backed conservatives with
money flowing through a post-Citzens United political landscape like a
tsunami beating liberals because the latter are insufficiently
principled? Is Weisberg living on the same planet as the rest of us?
This is an old problem. Weisberg is an alumnus of The New Republic,
which his old boss, Mike Kinsley, used to joke ought to have been
renamed “Even the New Republic…” because it was always endorsing right-
wing Reaganite programs while pretending to speak for liberals.
Weisberg has done his old colleagues like Charles Krauthammer, Fred
Barnes, and Morton Kondracke one better here, however, by getting on
board with a plan so heartless toward the poor and indigent that even
Ronald Regan and George W. Bush never dared propose anything like it.
Weisberg appears to know a bit of this. He admits that the “brave,
radical, and smart” plan he so admires is full of “sleight-of-hand
tricks” and would not actually come close to eliminating the deficit
in the coming decade, “leaving $400 billion in annual deficits as far
as the eye can see.”
Weisberg attributes this to yet another massive tax cut for the
wealthy, a goal he endorses, though he does not go quite as far as
Ryan in calling for a top rate of 25 percent. Apparently the fact that
the United States has just experienced 40 years of purposeful transfer
of wealth from working stiffs to the extremely wealthy—the share of
total wealth for the top 1 percent has increased from 8 percent during
the 1960s to more than 20 percent in 2011 with wages for the average
worker remaining flat during that period— is insufficient.
So too, the fact, that, as Jesse Drucker reports in Bloomberg-Business
Week:
For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the
effective federal income tax rate fell from almost 30 percent in 1995
to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the
approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of
taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29
percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true,
but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or
so.
Yet for an "Even the New Republic" liberal like Slate's Weisberg, this
is insufficiently generous to the extremely wealthy. Together with
Ryan, he thinks they need more.
And he recognizes even more evasions in the “brave, radical, and
smart” plan, including Rep. Ryan’s refusal to spell out the cuts in
domestic programs he assumes will be achieved through “caps,” as well
as “which deductions and tax subsidies he'd eliminate to pay for these
lower rates.” What’s more, his economic projections are a “a supply-
side fantasy. His anti-bailout rhetoric is silly pandering,” but, one
presumes, “brave, radical, and smart” fantasizing and pandering.
Here are some more “brave, radical, and smart” details of the plan
Weisberg presumably did not have room to praise:
■The Ryan plan, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’s Robert
Greenstein notes, "would get about two-thirds of its more than $4
trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from programs that serve people
of limited means…Actual program cuts produce net savings of $4.322
trillion. Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at
least $2.9 trillion—or about two-thirds—of this amount. The $2.9
trillion includes the following three categories of cuts: $2.17
trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care...$350
billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans
(other than Medicaid)...$400 billion in cuts in low-income
discretionary programs.”
■Michael Linden, Associate Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the
Center for American Progress, writes, "The rate cut at the top, of
course, benefits only those in the top brackets (the richest two
percent of Americans), but to pay for it, Ryan says he will 'broaden
the tax base.' Broadening the tax base means removing some tax
expenditures that currently benefit the middle class.” Ryan's
vagueness is probably deliberate, "since any detailed description of
his ideas for tax 'reform' would reveal a massive tax hike for the
middle class."
■Washington Post fact-checker columnist Glen Kessler adds that Rep.
Ryan relies on the Congressional Budget Office to vouch for his plan,
but he appears to ignore CBO estimates that a repeal of the health
care law would lead to an increase in the deficit. A substantial part
of his claimed deficit reduction—$1.4 trillion over the next 10 years—
comes from repealing the health care law. Even Alice Rivlin, whose
surname accounts for the “Rivlin” in “Ryan-Rivlin,” explained to
Garance Franke-Ruta: “There is no way we can control medical spending
at the inflation level. It’s going to rise faster than that.”
Moreover, “as the Congressional Budget Office noted, a lot of what
Rep. Ryan’s budget does is shift costs from the federal budget to
someone else’s budget: Medicaid’s costs moves to the states, and then
when the states cut it, to the people who need it, or to their
families.”
■Rep. Ryan’s budget estimates are very optimistic, report Jim
Tankersley and Katy O’Donnell at the National Journal: “If Rep. Paul
Ryan’s newly unveiled 2012 budget is signed into law, this is what
Ryan’s economic forecasters say will happen: The unemployment rate
will plunge by 2.5 percentage points. The still-sinking housing market
will roar back in a brand new boom. The federal government will
collect $100 billion more in income tax revenues than it otherwise
would have. And that’s just in the first year. By 2015, the
forecasters say, unemployment will fall to 4 percent. By 2021, it will
be a nearly unprecedented 2.8 percent.”
■Finally, seniors would pay much more for Medicare under Rep. Ryan’s
proposal, report Julie Appleby, Mary Agnes Carey, and Laurie McGinley
at Kaiser Health News: “Seniors and the disabled would pay sharply
more for their Medicare coverage under a new plan by House Republicans
aimed at curbing the nation’s growing deficit, a Congressional Budget
Office analysis shows. For example, by 2030, under the plan, typical
65-year-olds would be required to pay 68 percent of the total cost of
their coverage, which includes premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-
pocket costs, according to CBO. That compares with the 25 percent they
would pay under current law, CBO said. The GOP budget proposal also
would raise the eligibility age for the politically popular program—
and repeal big chunks of the health care overhaul law approved by
Congress last year.”
In fact, the only real value of Rep. Ryan’s plan is that, like
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on the right of public workers
to bargain collectively, it clarifies the long-term agenda of the
conservative class war that right-wing intellectuals and operatives
have been planning and waging against poor and middle-class Americans
for nearly half a century now. That the mainstream media is peopled
with so many influential “liberals” willing to call this agenda
“brave, radical, and smart” and instruct genuine liberals to endorse
it on principle tells us a great deal about why this vicious assault
on what was once the American social compact has been so successful so
far.
Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a columnist for The
Nation, Moment, and The Daily Beast. His newest book is Kabuki
Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama.
thomaswheat1975
keywords: paul ryan, gop, republican tax cut 2.9 trillion
medicare medicaid cuts