Looting - UPDATED

by: bloomingpol

Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 20:11:42 PM EST
Two groups of policy experts weighed in on the effects of the Ryan budget proposal, the Roadmap to America's Future, the Republican plan to cure the economy that most Republicans have been running away from because it has third rail issues, i.e. getting rid of Social Security and Medicare, among other programs.  Turns out there's a lot more there for those of us who aren't rich to not like.

First

The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax. At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families, privatize a substantial portion of Social Security, eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance, end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid, and terminate the Children's Health Insurance Program. The plan would replace these health programs with a system of vouchers whose value would erode over time and thus would purchase health insurance that would cover fewer health care services as the years went by.
Second

An analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center found that the richest 1% of Americans -- those making more than $633,000 a year -- would find their tax burden cut in half in 2014. The more one makes, the bigger the cut -- millionaires who Republicans have already taken good care of would find their taxes cut even more dramatically, by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To make up the difference, we'd all have to pay a new consumption tax on goods and services. On the whole, the tax burden would shift dramatically from the wealthy to the middle class.

And best of all, even with new taxes on the middle class, and the massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security, Ryan's roadmap still wouldn't balance the budget for a very long time.

Sounds like something Judd Gregg and Kelly Ayotte could go for.  Oh, yes, why do I call it looting?  I flipped Ayn Rand's use of looting in her juvenile version of capitalism to reflect what really goes on when Republicans run things: a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class, the actual engine of our economy, to the true parasites, those who live off looting the rest of us.

Update:  Matthew Yglesias points out some more problems with the Roadmap:

That said, the plan would also likely destroy the private health insurance system in the United States by eliminating the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance plans. This tax preference is not very good public policy, but it's a hidden government intervention that's critical to making our "private" insurance system work, insofar as it works at all.

and

Meanwhile, by completely eliminating corporate income tax and taxation of dividends, he's opening the door to massive tax evasion.
Close Window