Politics Decoded

The Republican budget is the same-old, trickle-down Bush economics (but on steroids) that created such a shrinking of the middle class, that Pew calls the last 11 years "the lost decade” for the middle class." 

The Republican budget will increase the debt by more than $10 trillion in the next ten years; while lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy!  The non-partisan CBO says that 62% of spending cuts would be from low-income programs, while 37% of tax benifits would go to those making over a million per year.

Catholic Bishops called the Ryan plan immoral and indefensible. They said it "will hurt hungry children, poor families, seniors and workers who cannot find employment."

It gives the wealthy huge tax breaks, but gives little or none to the middle class and poor.  Over 8 million people will lose food stamps, and 76% of their households include children.  

Romney is trying to distance himself from the Ryan budget, but he said, "I think it’d be marvelous if the Senate were to pick up Paul Ryan’s budget and to adopt it and pass it along to the president."

The Republican budget will destroy Medicare and slash funding for nursing homes, teachers, police, firefighters, food safety,  road safety, cancer research, clean water and air, workplace safety, scientific research, postal service, border security, national parks, Pell Grants, air-traffic controllers,  weather forecasting, Head Start, child care, and the disabled.  It will end VA care for 1.3 million veterans.  But it will not cut the $100 billion per year in corporate welfare.

It will make the Bush tax cuts (that mostly benefit the wealthy) permanent plus give those making $1 million+  per year an extra $256,000 tax cut (12.5% after-tax increase).  But those earning $50,000 - $75,000 would only get a $1,000 cut (1.8% after-tax increase). Half the people making $20,000 - $30,000 would get no tax cut.   Romney would pay less than 1% in income tax.  

The Republican budget will add $10 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.  $5.4 trillion by making the Bush tax cuts permanent plus $4.6 trillion in new cuts for everybody.

Now add  $2.1 trillion for Romney's increased defense spending (50% more than we're spending right now) to that $10 trillion tax cut deficit, and you're up to a $12.1 trillion deficit in the next 10 years.

Romney is also going to keep low rates on savings and investments, eliminate the estate tax, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, cut corporate taxes, give corporations a "tax holiday" so they can bring money they have stashed overseas home, and the wealthy will have the same tax burden they do today. 

But Romney says this $12.1 trillion won't raise the deficit because there will be more tax revenue from the economic growth he's going to create, and "High income tax payers will have fewer deductions."  Romney and Ryan both refuse to name what even one of these deductions will be.

Romney says he's going to do all of this without increasing taxes on the middle class, but the only big deductions left are mortgage interest, charitable donations, retirement savings, and employer-provided health insurance.

Experts say his budget doesn't add up.  Even George H. W. Bush said that trying to balance the budget with tax cuts and defense spending increases was "voodoo economics."   

Romney said he wouldn’t approve a tax increase on anybody even if the ratio was 10:1 (spending cuts to tax increase), and he signed the no-tax pledge to prove it.

Newt Gingrich, former Republican House Speaker, called the Republican budget “right-wing social engineering.” 

Republicans like to say that Democrats stand for wasteful spending and higher taxes, but the last President to balance the budget was Bill Clinton. The tax rate is lower right now than it was under Eisenhower, and  lower than it was for 7 out of 8 of the Reagan years. 

When President Bush took office in 2001, he inherited a $236 billion budget surplus, with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion.  His tax cuts for the wealthy didn’t work, and the economy that he sent into a recession in December 2007  went off the cliff in Bush’s last few months in office (late 2008.)  When Bush ended his term, he left Obama with a  with a $1.3 trillion deficit and a projected 10-year shortfall of $3 - $8 trillion. 

But under President Obama’s leadership, the recession ended in June 2009.

See "Goodbye Medicare?" page here.

See "Goodbye Nursing Homes?" page here.