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For a more detailed look at what I outlined here yesterday please pay a visit to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) website where he outlines his "Roadmap", or "Contract with on America 2.0"
TPM's Christina Bellantoni
The roadmap has a GOP grab-bag of tax cuts, eliminating capital gains taxes, interest income taxes, the alternative minimum tax and estate tax Republicans dubbed the "death" tax. It also increases the standard deduction for tax filers.
It also eliminates the top three tax brackets for the wealthy.
"These are very, very dramatic changes in the tax code ... likely to lose a tremendous amount of revenue," said Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBBP).
It tries to replace these with an 8.5 % "consumption tax", which according to Bellantoni, experts have said would increase the burden to the lower and middle classes by taxing all goods and services. Also, the revenue raised by this tax would not offset the revenue lost by the tax cuts.
Social Security would be privatized, with people "choosing" different individual retirement accounts overseen by Wall St. We know how well that worked out with Individual Retirement Accounts losing half their value or more in the final days of Bush & Co. Ryan seems to be living in the 60s or 70s of the last century, as he mentions private employer pension plans. Does anyone working in that sector even have one anymore? The age to receive "federal" retirement benefits, assuming they're not lost in a stock market crash, would be raised to 70.
Here is the bit on Medicare I alluded to yesterday, from Ryan's website (bold mine):
Medicare Payment. For future Medicare beneficiaries who are now under 55 or younger (those who first become eligible on or after 1 January 2021), the proposal creates a standard Medicare payment to be used for the purchase of private health coverage. Currently enrolled Medicare beneficiaries and those becoming eligible in the next 10 years (i.e. turning 65 by 1 January 2021) will see no changes in the current structure of their Medicare benefits. The payment will be made directly to the health plan designated by the beneficiary (similar to the administration of the refundable health care tax credit), with the beneficiary receiving any leftover amount as a payment from the health plan, or assuming financial responsibility for any difference in the payment and the total cost of the premium
Fat chance of their being any "leftover amount", with health insurance costs expected to eat uo 40% of the pre-tax income of a family earning 70k per year within the next ten years.
Ryan plans to reduce the "stigma" of Medicaid by eviscerating the program.. Why there should be a stigma to begin with, he doesn't say.
Ryan's Republican Roadmap will not just make us car-sick, it'll lead us to another crash. One that only the rich will survive, if that.
