Paul Ryan’s “2012 Path to Poverty / Discounted Soylent Green For All” budget proposal

The very loud tea party Republican base won’t pay attention to the details of Ryan’s budget proposal or try to investigate it for themselves — Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will tell them everything they need to know. That’s how the very loud tea party Republican base will continue to support and vote for even more corporate wealth and power, ending the middle-class as we know it, all because of extreme CONSERVATIVE SOCIAL ISSUES.

Tea party Republicans claim to be all about the size of government and government spending and NOT about social issues. However, this latest fight over the 2011 budget and the extreme social conservative riders that their representatives in the House tried (and failed) to enact betrayed them. They screamed “Shut it down!” rather than compromise on items that really had nothing to do with spending and a budget. The GOP knows the chain they can always pull with this base is going to be variations of God, guns, and gays.

Mike Lux at C&L has a good summary of Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal, but begins with some common sense suggestions for reducing our deficit (emphasis mine):

I can get to a balanced budget a lot faster than that, and do it without dismantling Medicare and Medicaid, and without taking an axe to Pell Grants, Head Start, and meals for shut-in seniors and hungry children. Heck, Jan Schakowsky’s plan balances the entire budget except for interest payments on the national debt in five years. You can easily balance the budget in less than 10 years, even including those interest payments, simply by cutting the waste in military spending, reforming the government contracting procedures, ending tax loopholes for investment bankers and offshore companies, ending subsidies to oil companies and big agribusinesses, taxing speculative financial trades, and having millionaires pay taxes at the same rate they did under Ronald Reagan.

The Ryan budget has nothing — not a single frickin’ thing — to do with cutting the federal deficit. It is all about income redistribution, simple as that. If you take away the budget savings Ryan claims from projecting that the wars we are in will wind down soon, he has $4.3 trillion in budget cuts and $4.2 trillion in tax cuts. And I bet you can guess which fact comes next: the budget cuts are targeted almost 100 percent at programs that help low-income families and the working middle class, while the tax cuts are almost entirely directed toward the wealthiest 10 percent. Continue reading →

FY2011 Spending Bill — done. Next up: FY2012 Budget — Let the Class Wars begin!

Yesterday’s vote:

Passed the House (with Democratic help) — 179 Republicans joined 81 Democrats for easy final passage of 260-167. Fifty-nine Republicans and 108 Democrats opposed it. [source]

Passed the Senate 81-19, easily surpassing the necessary 60-vote threshold. [source]

The President will sign today and our government is funded through September 30.

The numbers according to a CBO analysis:

Domestic discretionary appropriations will fall $38 billion from levels set at the beginning of the year. [source]

Because of several factors, the bill will only reduce direct spending by about $350 million. [source]

The FY2012 Budget:

Paul Ryan (R-WI) 2012 budget plan: directs Congress to cut at least $5 trillion dollars of spending over the next decade by reforming Medicaid to become a block grant program, reconfiguring Medicare to be a voucher program, defunding health care reform, and reducing taxes [source] — (My note: he proposes reducing taxes for the wealthy).

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) 2012 budget plan: freezes non-security discretionary spending for five years, cuts security spending by $89 billion over ten years, phases out funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2015 and reduces farm subsidies by $20 billion over the next decade. [It] preserves Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security and repeals the Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making more than $200,000 per year. [source]

President Obama’s long term spending plan: proposes $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 12 years [with] a “balanced” approach as deficit reduction would be attained from a combination of spending cuts and tax increases …cutting non-security discretionary spending by $770 billion, reducing security spending by $400 billion and repealing Bush-era tax cuts for the “wealthiest Americans.” [It] aims to save $480 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. [source]

Anthony Weiner tells the Teaparty Republicans to stop acting like ‘fragile little butterflies’

Via AskAnthonyWeiner

Transcript via C&L:

WEINER: Boy oh boy. Have these Republicans been listening to themselves over the past three years? Have they been listening to the tone that they have used against the president when having this debate? I’ve got to tell you something. I was watching that speech, and I was the opposite. I was thinking “Boy the president’s being so gentle and modest.” I mean, you know what I would have said. I would have said the Republican plan stinks and I will chew my right arm off before I sign any part of it. The fact is, this is a competition of ideas. And now my Republican friends, they have the audacity to say what common sense, what a fifth grade math student can tell, which is they’re idea is a terrible abdication of our responsibilities as Americans. Their math doesn’t add up. And if you go back and take a look at the speech, it was remarkably gentle. Continue reading →

inothernews:

David Fitzsimmons / The Arizona Daily Star

Screw You: Me, Myself and I — The Life & Death of Ayn Rand

That should really be the title of Atlas Shrugged, Part II.

So now we know that Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand’s biggest fanboi and author of the “2012 Path to Poverty: Soylent Green for Everyone” budget plan, went to college on Social Security benefits he received after his father’s death. And that’s fine — for HIM. He just doesn’t want you or your children to be able to do the same.

No wonder Ryan worships at the shrine of Saint Ayn: Rand constantly railed against government help as something that turned people into morally weak parasites who fed off society. WELL. When the time came for Rand to sign up for Social Security and Medicare, she did so — but under the name Ann O’Connor. If she was willing be a morally weak parasite on the ‘dole’ of the United States government, apparently she wanted to keep it a secret. (Emphasis below is mine):

Michael Ford: [I]t was revealed in the recent “Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank O’Connor).

As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”

But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.

In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.

And that last statement, in a nutshell, is what this movement, Objectivism, is all about. Remember that when you listen to Paul Ryan’s or Rand Paul’s “ideas.”

Ayn Rand quote:

I think it’s a monstrous thing — the whole progression of everything they’re doing — to feature, or answer, or favor the incompetent, the retarded, the handicapped, including, you know, the kneeling buses and all kinds of impossible expenses. I do not think that the retarded should be ~allowed~ to come ~near~ children. Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they’re interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, and certainly not as an example of something ~they~ have to live down to.

– Ayn Rand, The Age of Mediocrity, Q & A Ford Hall Forum, April, 1981

All men are created equal, until we file our tax returns

Dave Gilson at Mother Jones went chart-crazy [yester]day. I like this chart above, and the clear bottomline: the janitor pays more tax as a percentage of income than the millionaire pays. To me, it seems VERY fair to increase the effective tax rate of the millionaire to 24.9% to match the janitor’s.

Maybe someone smarter than me can explain how the Teaparty Republicans and the fat cats figure the incomes of the wealthy should continue to rise and their taxes should continue to shrink (from 35% to 25% in Ryan’s budget) — while the rest of us have incomes that have either stagnated or shrunk, or have been lost completely to unemployment. For those of us lucky enough to even have a stagnated / shrunken income right now, we know that a millionaire will pay less a percentage of his income to taxes than we will.

The Republican budget plan: The rich get richer and the poor pay more of their income to taxes (while getting less federal services).

See more charts at Mother Jones.

technipol:

Dems’ first TV ad of the cycle hits Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposal

LMFAO

~

This is excellent.

someecards

Class War, Corporate-style

Where are the jobs in America? In the pockets of corporate CEOs:

As most American families continue to struggle with high unemployment and stagnant wages, CEOs at the country’s 350 biggest companies saw their pay jump 11% last year to a median of $9.3 million, according to a study conducted for the Wall Street Journal…

For the surveyed CEOs, the sharpest pay gains came via bonuses, which soared 19.7% as profits recovered, especially in some hard-hit industries. … Net income rose by a median of 17%; shareholders at those companies enjoyed a median return, including dividends, of 18%.

Of course to be fair, we can’t generalize and say these corporations are creating ZERO jobs. There are probably tons of new jobs in China and India. Just not here.

I wonder when the teabaggers will wake up from the spell of their corporate masters and quit voting for the party that wants to annihilate the middle-class?

”Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.” ~ Newt Gingrich

The epic Newt Gingrich whirlwind, non-stop Walkback-Apology Tour

Sunday – 15 May: Gingrich called Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposal “right-wing social engineering” and “radical.”

Monday – 16 May: Gingrich told the Wall Street Journal editorial board that it would “catastrophic” for Congress to pass the bill as written. Of course the House of Representatives, with votes from every Republican save four, has already done that.

Monday – 16 May: Gingrich defended his remarks, and blamed the liberal media for stoking a controversy by taking them “out of context.”

Tuesday – 17 May: Gingrich called brave Paul Ryan to apologize.

Tuesday – 17 May: on Fox News that evening, Gingrich argued that it was dishonest to quote anything he said two days ago.

Wednesday – 18 May: Chuck Schumer gives Newt a Medicare-death-hug: “Newt and I are considered political opposites, but I couldn’t agree more with what he said Sunday about the House Republican proposal to end Medicare…. In a straight shooting way he acknowledged that this is right-wing social engineering.”

Rachel Maddow describes it this way: he’s the head on the pike outside the city. Newt has failed the GOP / Teaparty litmus test:

“In order to be a real candidate, you’ve got to endorse the Paul Ryan/kill Medicare thing, which is a classic catch-22 for Republican candidates, because if you do endorse the Paul Ryan/kill Medicare thing, voters will likely have something to say about that.”

Income redistribution the GOP way: continue Bush tax cuts, abolish Medicare

[S]imply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade. While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment. [OffTheCharts]

Jack Cluth — Lest any of us forget how we got to where we are:

It’s become almost an article of faith among the cognoscenti on the Right that Barack Obama’s policies are largely responsible for the mess we’re in. I suppose this only goes to prove two things:

Americans have a disturbingly short and selective memory, and

Americans are a highly suggestible, malleable, and an easily propagandized collection of barely lucid sheeple.

Follow the money: who’s benefited from Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy? Who’s benefited from the Afghanistan / Iraq wars? Certainly not working- and middle-class Americans. Isn’t it strange that the working- and middle-class GOP base continues to support those who rob from them to give to the rich?

While we’re busy throwing more of our tax dollars at rich people, oil companies and corporate CEOs (instead of into our own treasury), the GOP is trying to convince us that ending Medicare is the only option available to patriotic Americans who want to manage our deficit.

The truth of the matter is that in order to continue diverting trillions in potential federal revenue to America’s millionaires, we probably will need to abolish Medicare.

Video: The Gentleman from New York on the GOP’s plan to eliminate Medicare

“It [Ryan’s budget proposal] is not a construct to develop a plan; it is the proposal of the Republican Party of the United States of America to eliminate Medicare as a guaranteed entitlement. If you don’t believe me, go get the BOOK that they wrote. Go get the BUDGET that they wrote. Go get the BILL that they wrote…” ~ Rep. Anthony Weiner

Don’t throw grandma from the nursing home

Paul Ryan’s Path to Poverty budget proposal continues to stink up America (emphasis mine):

But the new polling by Anzalone Liszt Research, the Democratic-aligned polling firm, found an even more dramatic response on Medicaid if respondents are told of the impacts seniors face.

Told that the Ryan budget “would cut $750 billion from Medicaid, including funding for 80 percent of nursing home residents, forcing many seniors to be kicked out of their nursing homes,” 63 percent of respondents said they were “very” concerned. That figure was 69 percent for seniors and 64 percent for independents.

About 64 percent of senior nursing home residents depend on Medicaid as the primary means of paying for their housing. Still more rely on Medicaid for other expenses or to be able to stay in their own homes.

But remember in Ryan’s budget proposal, the rich should get ever larger tax breaks. The Koch brothers’ Teaparty is doing great!

Related:

Dear Karma: I think you’ve missed a GOP congressman named Paul Ryan…

Piggybacking off of that last post about rich people and Paul Ryan’s tax cuts for rich people (and telling college students to work 3 jobs), here’s a delightful reminder of what lies beneath Ryan’s (oil) slick exterior of Randian wealth worship and Eddie-Munster-like good looks, courtesy of Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:

…Tell us, congressman, when you were skating for a couple of years on your Social Security survivor’s benefits, and when your family stayed on the government dole for longer that that, “taking” from, among other people, my parents and me, how did you manage not to be “lulled” into a life of “complacency” and “dependency”? How were you not “drained” of your “incentive”? How was your “will to make the most of your life” not drained, as well. What’s the magic number? Two years on the dole? Three? Five? Let us know so we can stop pestering you and find our bootstraps.

I suspect it was because, after you left the family earth-moving business, you eventually went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Bob Kasten, and then you went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Sam Brownback, and then you went briefly into the private sector — as a speechwriter for the late Jack Kemp — before going back on a government paycheck when you were elected to the House, 13 years ago. At which point, you became the pet Big Thinker and point man for a bunch of rich people, including many — Was the wine to your liking, by the way? — of the same folks that crashed the economy in 2008, thereby creating the conditions that, much to your obvious pain and chagrin, are turning so many of your fellow citizens into dependent, complacent, will-lacking slobs, because they’re taking unemployment benefits. That pretty much guaranteed you wouldn’t be paying for your own dinners much any more.

Read it all…

Oh, snap.

Like any disaster movie, Paul Ryan’s terror budget has a theatrical trailer!

You guys, Paul Ryan wants to fill you with fear and dread (hint: vote Republican!)

Ryan argues that the 2008 crash caught policymakers “by surprise,” but he sees another one on the way.

“Let me ask you a question: what if your president, your senator and your congressman knew it was coming? What if they knew when it was going to happen, why it was going to happen, and more importantly, what if they knew what they needed to do to stop it from happening and they had the time to stop it? But they chose to do nothing about it, because it wasn’t good politics?

“What would you think of that person? It would be immoral. This coming debt crisis is the most predictable crisis we’ve ever had in this country…

blah blah…

Steve Benen yawns,

The political motivations for all of this are pretty obvious: Ryan’s plan is going to recommend brutal cuts to domestic programs, and will do his best to say the slashes are necessary because of the “coming debt crisis.” For the Ayn Rand acolyte, these aren’t cuts he wants to make, but rather, they’re cuts he thinks he has to make to prevent a debt-driven disaster.

Or so the argument goes.

[…] First, there is no debt crisis. The United States can easily borrow as much as it needs at low interest rates, suggesting there’s nothing even close to a debt crisis. This is a fig leaf the right is using to rationalize draconian cut to domestic priorities, which they’ve long wanted to make anyway.

Second, if Paul Ryan and his allies were seriously panicked about reducing the deficit in a hurry to prevent a “crisis,” they’d consider modest tax increases on the wealthy. Indeed, we know exactly what’s driving the national debt, and much of it has to do with tax cuts the rich didn’t need and the country couldn’t afford. When Ryan acknowledges this, he’ll start to have some credibility on the issue.

And third, for all of Ryan’s alleged fear about the debt, his last budget plan ignored deficit reduction altogether, and instead prioritized more tax breaks for those at the very top.

Funny, these relevant details didn’t seem to make the cut of Ryan’s little video. What a shame.

Plus, Ryan’s special effects suck. What kind of lame theatrical trailer is this?

…

The White House issued this statementresponding to the House Republican budget released today by Rep. Paul Ryan – The House budget once again fails the test of balance, fairness, and shared responsibility. It would shower the wealthiest few Americans with an average tax cut of at least $150,000, while preserving taxpayer giveaways to oil companies and breaks for Wall Street hedge fund managers. What’s worse is that all of these tax breaks would be paid for by undermining Medicare and the very things we need to grow our economy and the middle class – things like education, basic research, and new sources of energy. And instead of strengthening Medicare, the House budget would end Medicare as we know it, turning the guarantee of retirement security into a voucher that will shift higher and higher costs to seniors over time.