ALEC Rock. 28-year old PhD student debunks the most influential austerity study. Ten signs Paul Ryan is dropping acid. 1. Two Million Jobs Lost in 2014 Alone The entire point of the "fiscal cliff" showdown in December wasn't that the triple of whammy of tax increases, termination of the payroll tax holiday and the automatic spending cuts from the sequester would increase the national debt, but instead reduce it too quickly and thus deal a body blow to the economy. The nonpartisan CBO warned that "going over the cliff" could have reduced gross domestic product by 2.9 percent and driven the unemployment rate to 9.1 percent by the end of this year. But while that result was largely averted, Paul Ryan's House GOP budget for fiscal year 2014 could prove even more painful.
An assessment by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that Ryan's blueprint would cut spending by $121 billion in FY 2014 and by another $343 billion in 2015. 2. $5.7 Trillion Tax Cut, Mostly for the Wealthy As TPC’s Howard Gleickman put it this week: 3. 4. 5. Back in 2010, Rep. 6. 38 Million More Uninsured 7. 8. 9. 10. Paul Ryan’s budget: Social engineering with a side of deficit reduction. Here is Paul Ryan's path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act's Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There's a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets -- 10 percent and 25 percent -- and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
But the real point of Ryan's budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. Ryan's budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan's real point throughout his career. But it takes a while to get to all that. Our deficits aren’t as bad as Washington thinks. This week marks the beginning of the U.S. budget season. On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan presented the budget for House Republicans. Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray will, for the first time since 2009, present a budget on behalf of Senate Democrats.
In a few weeks, the Obama administration will publish its own budget. Okay, that last part is just what we do in my house. Behind all these appendix-heavy documents lurks the specter of our budget deficits, which have emerged as pretty much the only problem in Washington that both parties can agree to focus on (sorry, millions of jobless Americans). 1. 2. 3. If you guessed No. 3, then congratulations! Today’s deficits are, if anything, too small.
This is the moment to pass a big tax cut for employers who hire new workers, to rebuild our infrastructure at bargain- basement rates, and to help state and local governments reverse the deep cuts they’ve made in recent years. Future deficits are a legitimate concern.