March, 20 2012, 03:21pm EDT
House Republican Budget Offers Pain for Everyone but the Rich
Today, as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled his budget plan for the coming fiscal year, the Center for American Progress released an analysis revealing that the blueprint not only mirrors last year's disastrous effort but also manages to reject what little bipartisan budget agreement was forged in 2011.
WASHINGTON
Today, as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled his budget plan for the coming fiscal year, the Center for American Progress released an analysis revealing that the blueprint not only mirrors last year's disastrous effort but also manages to reject what little bipartisan budget agreement was forged in 2011.
"This is not a serious budget proposal. It is specific about massive tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, big oil companies, and multinational corporations, but frustratingly vague about how the numbers could possibly add up," said Michael Linden, author of the analysis and Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress. "The budget ends Medicare and Medicaid as we know it, but lacks any plan to create jobs, create growth, and build the middle class."
This year's proposed House budget for fiscal year 2013 starting in October would once again end the Medicare guarantee, slash investments crucial to the middle class and to future economic growth, cut taxes for the rich, and protect taxpayer subsidies for oil companies. It again ignores current economic challenges by offering no credible job-creation measures, and it again places virtually the entire burden of debt reduction on the shoulders of those least able to bear it. Further, the new plan proposes spending levels well below those agreed to by both Republicans and Democrats just eight months ago.
The analysis outlines the six most important failures of the new House budget plan:
- Undermining the middle class. Nearly every important element of the new budget proposal from the Republican leadership in the House would weaken the middle class in America. The plan ends the Medicare guarantee of decent health insurance in retirement. It also slashes critical middle-class investments such as education and infrastructure by 45 percent and 24 percent respectively. It includes not a single new measure to help the nearly 13 million unemployed get back into a decent job. And on top of all that, the middle class would end up paying higher taxes as well.
- Rigging the system even more heavily in favor of the richest 1 percent. The new Ryan plan protects existing tax breaks for those at the top of the income spectrum, and then goes the next step and offers them huge new tax cuts. Rep. Ryan and his colleagues insist that the more than $3 trillion in tax cuts for the rich won't result in lower revenue, but they are deliberately vague about how the numbers could possibly add up. The reality is that the only way to pay for such huge tax cuts for the 1 percent is to make the 99 percent pick up the tab.
- Ending the Medicare guarantee and raising health care costs for seniors. This year's plan, just like last year's, calls for replacing the Medicare system we currently have with a capped voucher that seniors would use to purchase health care coverage on the private market. Unlike last year, however, the new plan claims to maintain traditional Medicare as an option that seniors could choose to purchase. This sounds a little better, but in reality Ryan's latest health care scheme for senior citizens would inevitably result in a "death spiral" for Medicare that means higher costs for seniors.
- Undercutting the economic recovery. Not only does the House Republican budget plan fail to propose even a single new idea for spurring job creation, it would also force an immediate swerve into severe austerity. It's an economic prescription that, as Europe is finding out, will make matters much worse.
- Deviating dramatically from a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Rep. Ryan's new plan places the entire burden of deficit reduction on the middle class and the poor, and it would actually give the rich additional tax breaks at the same time. The numbers don't even add up to real deficit reduction. The tax proposals alone would break the bank, and the spending cuts are unrealistic in the extreme.
- Reneging on last year's bipartisan budget agreement. Last summer's debt-limit deal, known as the Budget Control Act, included an agreement on overall "discretionary" spending levels--the money that Congress appropriates each year--for the coming fiscal year. The Budget Control Act passed both houses of Congress with wide bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in August last year. For his part, President Obama adhered to the enacted law when he presented his proposed budget for FY 2013 earlier this year. The new House Republican plan, however, completely reneges on it. It's tough to see how a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement can ever be reached when even previously agreed-to bipartisan deals fall through.
Read the full analysis:
The Center for American Progress is a think tank dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through ideas and action. We combine bold policy ideas with a modern communications platform to help shape the national debate, expose the hollowness of conservative governing philosophy and challenge the media to cover the issues that truly matter.
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Manhattan DA: Trump's Intimidation Efforts Won't Be Tolerated
Alvin Bragg's comments came after Trump urged his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back" ahead of his expected indictment.
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Saturday that former President Donald Trump's efforts to undermine his prosecutorial authority won't be tolerated.
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"Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment," Bragg continued.
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But it came just hours after the former president and leading 2024 GOP candidate claimed on his social media platform that he "will be arrested" on Tuesday and called on his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back."
Trump is expected to be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in a criminal case involving hush money paid to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president, but its timing remains uncertain.
In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: "It's time!!! We are a nation in steep decline... We just can't allow this anymore. They're killing our nation as we sit back and watch. We must save America! Protest, protest, protest!!!"
Trump's call to action echoed how, six weeks after losing the 2020 presidential election, he fired off a tweet encouraging his supporters to join a "big protest" in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. "Be there, will be wild!" he wrote. Hundreds of far-right extremists came and—after Trump told them to march from a rally near the White House to the Capitol—ransacked the halls of Congress in a bid to prevent lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden's win. Several people died as a result of the insurrection, which was precipitated by Trump and his Republican allies' ceaseless lies about voter fraud.
Mother Jones' D.C. bureau chief David Corn noted that Trump has recently "excused or dismissed the violence of January 6."
"He is an authoritarian willing to (again) use violence for his own ends," Corn tweeted. "That is a threat to the nation."
Trump started priming his supporters for unrest more than a year ago. At a January 2022 rally in Texas, the ex-president promised to pardon January 6 rioters if he wins in 2024 and called for protests if prosecutors investigating his effort to subvert the 2020 election and other alleged crimes attempt to bring charges.
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On Saturday, HuffPost's senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte asked if high-ranking Republicans had anything to say about Trump's most recent threats.
"If a new round of political violence occurs, McCarthy should absolutely shoulder some of the blame."
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Trump is expected to be charged in connection with payments his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal—both of whom say they had affairs with Trump—at the height of the 2016 presidential election.
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McCarthy on Saturday described Bragg's probe as "an outrageous abuse of power by a radical D.A. who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump."
"I'm directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions," he tweeted.
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By the time he fired off his own tweet, McCarthy had presumably seen Trump calling his supporters into the streets, echoing the incitement of violence against Congress two years ago. The speaker lived through that experience and witnessed firsthand the effect of Trump's words. And yet he opted to pretend otherwise in the weeks and months after the January 6 attack as he flew to Mar-a-Lago in supplication. In handing over unvetted security footage from the attack to a far-right propagandist last month, McCarthy is once again complicit in trying to whitewash the assault. If a new round of political violence occurs, McCarthy should absolutely shoulder some of the blame.
McCarthy was far from alone. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), for example, baselessly declared: "If they can come for Trump, they will come for you. This type of stuff only occurs in third world authoritarian countries."
The GOP's current framing of ongoing investigations into Trump as political "witch hunts" is not new. McCarthy and others reacted in a similar manner when the FBI in early August searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and removed boxes of documents as part of a federal probe into the ex-president's handling of classified materials.
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