Yeah. This is class warfare, plain and simple.
The good numbers: Paul Ryan’s budget will reduce spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade and reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion.
But it also cuts the top income tax rate by nearly a third, from 35 percent to 25 percent, which will add to the deficit.
So how will that be made up? By cutting spending associated with the middle and lower clases.
A big part of the House Budget Chairman's plan rests on the assumption that President Barack Obama’s health care law will be repealed. Over the next decade, that would cut $1.4 trillion in spending alone, according to Ryan's budget. Those savings, however, wouldn't go directly to deficit reduction, because Ryan would also repeal the elements of health care reform that are aimed at raising revenue or reducing costs.
Ryan's budget spends less on nearly every major category of the budget. Over the next decade, Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to cut $389 billion from Medicare, the public health insurance program for seniors. Over the same period, Ryan's budget puts $735 billion less toward Medicaid, which benefits Americans too poor to afford private insurance. Discretionary spending on domestic programs is also reduced by $923 billion.
Two exceptions are security and defense spending and spending on Social Security, the public pension program for the elderly. Both are kept steady and relatively unchanged from Obama’s proposed budget.
So Medicare basically gets gutted. Not for people who have it, and not for people who will get it before 2022. But for people like me (and younger).
And while you sit there sorting this out and wondering if there's a better way, let me remind you that General Electric paid zero dollars in taxes this year.