Brad Manning
2011-04-06 18:55:21 UTC
"House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) imposes the burden
for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced our government to
spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors and the poor."
-------------------------
"Who’s hurt by Paul Ryan’s budget proposal?"
Op-Ed
By Harold Meyerson
April 7, 2011
If it does nothing else, the budget that House Republicans unveiled
Tuesday provides the first real Republican program for the 21st
century, and it is this:
Repeal the 20th century.
Republicans have never particularly warmed to the American social
contract that governed most of the past hundred years. Its central
elements, enacted during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and
Lyndon Johnson, assumed a level of collective national responsibility
for the well-being of the elderly and children, the two groups who
could not benefit directly from employment, through such programs as
Social Security, Medicare, funding for schools and for college grants
and loans.
The logic behind these programs wasn’t simply humanitarian. It was
also economic: Bolstering the purchasing power of the elderly
increased economic activity and enabled the adult children of the
elderly to invest more in their own children. Enabling more people to
get good educations straight through college created a more productive
workforce. A similar dual logic — both humanitarian and Keynesian —
informed the programs that aided the poor and unemployed, such as
Medicaid and food stamps.
Conservatives have never cottoned to this contract. They argue that a
laissez faire economy can produce even greater or at least similar
levels of prosperity and economic security, despite a striking lack of
historical or economic data to back up this contention. House Budget
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) made that claim Tuesday in
presenting his budget proposal. But Ryan’s pieties notwithstanding,
his budget is a prescription for diminishing prosperity and security,
a road map, in fact, for national decline.
Ryan achieves the bulk of his savings through sharp reductions in
projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid, converting the former
into a right-to-purchase private insurance, subsidized up to a point,
and the latter into a block grant program. (Scrapping Social Security
remains, for now, a bridge too far.) Skyrocketing medical costs are
the chief factor in rising government expenses, but rather than have
government bring down those costs by, say, negotiating with drug
companies on the price of their products, Ryan simply forces the
elderly, their children and the poor to pick up more of those costs.
As the number of retirees with defined-benefit pensions continues to
shrink (thanks to corporate America and, this year, Republican
governors), an increasing number of seniors will be unable to purchase
the medications they need.
Ryan’s budget would also reduce projected spending on discretionary
domestic programs — education, transportation, food safety and the
like — to well below levels of inflation. That not only ensures that
high-speed rail won’t be built but also means that potholes won’t be
filled.
A decade ago, some conservatives were still talking about “national
greatness conservatism.” Ryan’s budget is a manifesto for national
puniness conservatism.
The cover under which Ryan and other Republicans operate is their
concern for the deficit and national debt. But Ryan blows that cover
by proposing to reduce the top income tax rate to just 25 percent. He
imposes the burden for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced
our government to spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors
and the poor. The reductions in aid to the poor, says the budget
blueprint that Ryan released, will be made “to ensure that America’s
safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens
into lives of complacency and dependency.” That’s a pretty good
description of America’s top bankers, but Ryan’s budget showers them
with tax cuts.
Republicans can’t take sole credit for creating a vision of a
diminished America. Most of the Washington-based commentariat has
focused on the debt over the past year, ignoring both the persistence
of high unemployment and the absolute stagnation of wages even as
profits have soared. Those who applaud the macroeconomics of Ryan’s
cuts should at least be compelled to explain how ordinary Americans,
whose incomes haven’t risen since the late ’90s, can take up the
slack, in their own purchasing and in the nation’s economic activity,
created by these cuts. They might even want to think about raising
taxes on profits and capital gains, since these forms of income are
rising even as wages flatline.
And, finally, there’s talk that we have a president who’s a Democrat —
the party that created the American social contract of the 20th
century. Initially, he focused on reshaping and extending that
contract into the 21st. Now that the Republicans want to repeal it
all, he’s nowhere to be found. Has anybody seen him? Does he still
exist?
[***@washpost.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whos-hurt-by-paul-ryans-budget-proposal/2011/04/05/AFfP7PlC_story.html#
for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced our government to
spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors and the poor."
-------------------------
"Who’s hurt by Paul Ryan’s budget proposal?"
Op-Ed
By Harold Meyerson
April 7, 2011
If it does nothing else, the budget that House Republicans unveiled
Tuesday provides the first real Republican program for the 21st
century, and it is this:
Repeal the 20th century.
Republicans have never particularly warmed to the American social
contract that governed most of the past hundred years. Its central
elements, enacted during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and
Lyndon Johnson, assumed a level of collective national responsibility
for the well-being of the elderly and children, the two groups who
could not benefit directly from employment, through such programs as
Social Security, Medicare, funding for schools and for college grants
and loans.
The logic behind these programs wasn’t simply humanitarian. It was
also economic: Bolstering the purchasing power of the elderly
increased economic activity and enabled the adult children of the
elderly to invest more in their own children. Enabling more people to
get good educations straight through college created a more productive
workforce. A similar dual logic — both humanitarian and Keynesian —
informed the programs that aided the poor and unemployed, such as
Medicaid and food stamps.
Conservatives have never cottoned to this contract. They argue that a
laissez faire economy can produce even greater or at least similar
levels of prosperity and economic security, despite a striking lack of
historical or economic data to back up this contention. House Budget
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) made that claim Tuesday in
presenting his budget proposal. But Ryan’s pieties notwithstanding,
his budget is a prescription for diminishing prosperity and security,
a road map, in fact, for national decline.
Ryan achieves the bulk of his savings through sharp reductions in
projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid, converting the former
into a right-to-purchase private insurance, subsidized up to a point,
and the latter into a block grant program. (Scrapping Social Security
remains, for now, a bridge too far.) Skyrocketing medical costs are
the chief factor in rising government expenses, but rather than have
government bring down those costs by, say, negotiating with drug
companies on the price of their products, Ryan simply forces the
elderly, their children and the poor to pick up more of those costs.
As the number of retirees with defined-benefit pensions continues to
shrink (thanks to corporate America and, this year, Republican
governors), an increasing number of seniors will be unable to purchase
the medications they need.
Ryan’s budget would also reduce projected spending on discretionary
domestic programs — education, transportation, food safety and the
like — to well below levels of inflation. That not only ensures that
high-speed rail won’t be built but also means that potholes won’t be
filled.
A decade ago, some conservatives were still talking about “national
greatness conservatism.” Ryan’s budget is a manifesto for national
puniness conservatism.
The cover under which Ryan and other Republicans operate is their
concern for the deficit and national debt. But Ryan blows that cover
by proposing to reduce the top income tax rate to just 25 percent. He
imposes the burden for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced
our government to spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors
and the poor. The reductions in aid to the poor, says the budget
blueprint that Ryan released, will be made “to ensure that America’s
safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens
into lives of complacency and dependency.” That’s a pretty good
description of America’s top bankers, but Ryan’s budget showers them
with tax cuts.
Republicans can’t take sole credit for creating a vision of a
diminished America. Most of the Washington-based commentariat has
focused on the debt over the past year, ignoring both the persistence
of high unemployment and the absolute stagnation of wages even as
profits have soared. Those who applaud the macroeconomics of Ryan’s
cuts should at least be compelled to explain how ordinary Americans,
whose incomes haven’t risen since the late ’90s, can take up the
slack, in their own purchasing and in the nation’s economic activity,
created by these cuts. They might even want to think about raising
taxes on profits and capital gains, since these forms of income are
rising even as wages flatline.
And, finally, there’s talk that we have a president who’s a Democrat —
the party that created the American social contract of the 20th
century. Initially, he focused on reshaping and extending that
contract into the 21st. Now that the Republicans want to repeal it
all, he’s nowhere to be found. Has anybody seen him? Does he still
exist?
[***@washpost.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whos-hurt-by-paul-ryans-budget-proposal/2011/04/05/AFfP7PlC_story.html#