This is a great piece by Paul Krugman:
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion.
And that’s about the same as the budget office’s estimate of the 2020 deficit under the Obama administration’s plans. That is, Mr. Ryan may speak about the deficit in apocalyptic terms, but even if you believe that his proposed spending cuts are feasible — which you shouldn’t — the Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich.
The upward-transfer of American wealth must be complete before we all can be rich, right? Except it never, ever, ever works out that way. The House majority’s tea party-pleasing deficit reduction games are going to impact everything. They are already unpopular and will prove even more so in practice. Republicans just had to go further than the presidential budget commission, another overreach. They are counting on a post-Citizens United world of billionaire money — and a compliant media — to fool enough Americans for long enough to get away with it.
Seriously — that’s the GOP plan in a nutty nutshell (nuttier than a pecan pistachio peanut-butter sandwich). They reckon they can play chicken with America’s infrastructure, workforce, and middle class and get away with it by blaming all ensuing disasters on Obama. Because, you know, he wants America to fail. Birth certificate!
They take us for idiots. And we are. And so are they. Who wises up first may survive this season of artificial budget crisis.
