Well, here we go again: another year and another cynical, phony "budget" produced by Paul Ryan for the Republicans.
The two chief features of the Ryan budget are the reduction of the top tax rate from 39% to 25%, and the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. It is vitally important to notice that this is nothing but a massive giveaway to the rich, beyond anything we have seen proposed before, even by corrupt Republicans. You would have to be a fool to think that this has anything to do with decreasing the budget deficit- in fact it would explode it, and add trillions to the national debt.
Now, for the feature that is nowhere to be found in the budget: As has been Republican practice for the last several years, this document claims to balance the Federal budget by resorting to Republican promises about "closing loopholes" and "eliminating fraud and waste." But in fact, nowhere will Ryan (or any other Republican) identify which "loopholes" they want to close, nor provide evidence of fraud and waste that amounts to anything but a minuscule fraction of what would be needed to cover current deficits, let alone the massive new giveaways that they are proposing to provide to the rich.
Unfortunately, we all know that what Republicans are talking about when they cite loopholes are the mortgage interest deduction and health care deductions- which would massively punish middle class taxpayers in order to subsidize the lowering of tax rates on the rich- the only thing this ludicrous proposal is really about.
Finally, this document contains repeated malicious claims that regulation has to be done away with and the right of ordinary people to hold corporations responsible for the damage they do be curtailed; again, the same lying cant we have heard from Republicans for decades.
In fact, this "budget" is nothing but a rich person's wish list, which could have been written any year since the fifties. It has absolutely nothing to do with dealing with the deficit, which Republicans do not care about in any way, and everything to do with further enriching the wealthy backers who pay to keep Republicans in office, at the expense of everyone else. That is all Republicans ever care about, because they have long ago sold themselves into slavery to the rich. This has been true for a hundred years, and shows no sign of ever changing, no matter how much damage their behavior does to the rest of the country, and no matter how they fare in elections.
Well, there you go. Just one more cynical demonstration by Republicans that they don't give a God damn for anyone but the rich, and one more attempt to shove a deceitful, criminal theft of the nation's resources down the throats of the American people. Nevertheless, it will be hailed by far too many in the mainstream press as a bold, serious attempt to deal with our nation's financial situation, massively increasing the chances that the country will slit its own throat by enacting any of this disingenuous, vicious nonsense.
Note: this is a cut down version of a piece I posted on my blog, where I list all of the actual provisions of the Ryan budget, and go through them one by one. If you care, you can find it here.
I'm sure it is no help to the forces of good, but a hearty, "Fuck you, Paul Ryan, you fucking fucker." can't really hurt, can it?
ReplyDeleteFWIW, Ryan's lies are just par for the course for the GOP. It's very short odds that if a member of the reptilican disilluminati opens their mouth, a lie is forthcoming.
Budgets have become meaningless. rEpublicans propose the absurd while both parties seem satisfied to run deficits as needed.
ReplyDeleteKeynes won the battle, therefore we really are all Keynesians. Even the party who would have everyone believe they are about fiscal responsibilty.
You're missing the whole thing RN. The interest on the Bush debt alone is one trillion per year. Obama would have had to talk the republican pigs at the trough to cough up that much more in taxes just to start paying back what Bush and Cheney didn't even care about running up. The war cost he left us is still in the order of one trillion per year. Obama actually reduced the federal deficit his first year in office and every year since, despite the Bush depression.
ReplyDeleteRyan's budget reduces the taxes on the rich to levels unheard of in the last one hundred years. That's an exaggeration of how we first got into this mess.
You're right about one thing. The republican party isn't going to be the go-to guy to get us out of this mess... Repbulicans got us into this mess. The democrats are working to set things right again.
Good luck with that one FJ. I hope you are correct. We'll wait and see.
DeleteAs to the first, I get the point. Wouldn't it be nice if we would have spent the Iraq war dollars wisely? I guess GWB didn't get waging a senseless war and reducing revenue at the same time somehow just didn't make great sense.
Of course neither did the Fannie and Freddy fiasco. Primarily complements of Barny Frank and associates.
From the looks of things your team may have smooth sailing heading into 2014 and on to 2016. I don't think the rEpublican party bosses have much of a clue.
I'll be keeping my eye on the libertarian party and other alternative parties.
The Ryan budget is hardly a budget, but more like a political manifesto, one intended to continue the hostage taking of our economy and our people. It has no hope of passage but offers a clear message to the patrons of the GOP: Continued privation and punishment of the middle class in an effort to return more wealth to the oligarchy. And yes, it is absolutely disgusting and shameless ... even immoral.
ReplyDelete