House Republicans set the stage for a major philosophical collision with President Obama and the Democrats by introducing a budget this week that would cut spending by $5.3 trillion over the next decade, cut taxes across the board, and transform Medicare into a “premium-support” program. The blueprint, drawn up by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would overhaul the current tax code, leaving just two individual tax brackets, of 10 and 25 percent. Ryan’s plan would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and reform Medicare by giving seniors a subsidy they could spend either on private health care or traditional Medicare coverage. It would reduce non-entitlement spending as a percentage of GDP from about 12.5 percent today to 5.75 percent by 2030—a rate not seen since before World War II.
The budget has no prospect of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, but Ryan said Republicans wanted to offer voters an election-year contrast to President Obama’s budget plans. “There is an alternative path to the one the president has us on,” he said.
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The only value Republicans stand for, said Robert Reich in Salon.com, is letting the rich get richer, and the poor go hang. Ryan’s budget would slash Medicaid spending by a third, and gut programs like food stamps, Pell Grants, and job-training initiatives. While seniors paid more for health care and the poor suffered brutal cuts, the wealthiest Americans would get tax cuts of at least $150,000 a year. This is “pure social Darwinism”—of the most heartless kind.
Ryan’s budget is “more of a political statement than a governing blueprint,” said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. But while he’s right that Congress needs to cut the deficit, “highly partisan proposals” aren’t the way forward. Someday, lawmakers will “set the politicking aside and come up with a long-term fiscal plan that both parties can support.” This isn’t it.