I hope our favorite Tory reads this, because Jonathan Chait just eviscerates the very “serious” Ryan budget plan:
Ryan’s plan does single out a lot of people who would get less from the government. Specifically: the poor and the currently uninsured. Ryan would eliminate all the new coverage in the Affordable Care Act, increasing the ranks of the uninsured by some 30 million. That’s good! (Remember, we’re inhabiting Ryan’s moral universe. If those leeches wanted health insurance, then they should have thought of that before they decided to get breast cancer.) On top of that, he cuts another huge chunk from Medicaid, almost as much from food stamps and other aid to the impoverished, and there we go: about $3 trillion in honest-to-goodness budget savings wrested from the claws of the sick and poor.
But then, alas, Ryan gives all those savings right back and then some by proposing to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts, at a cost of almost $4 trillion. Ryan’s explanation for this decision in this report, which begins by decrying the existential dangers of the national debt in the most lurid terms, is comic. He explains that raising taxes on the rich would not, by itself, solve the problem. “To close the fiscal gap by raising the top rates,” he writes, “the government would have to collect an additional $500,000 each year on average from every taxpayer in the top two brackets.” So, he reasons, let’s just give them a big tax cut instead. Likewise, you don’t have enough time in the day to lose 20 pounds through exercise alone, so you might as well quit the gym and start watching more television.
So now Ryan has given back at least as much as he’s saved. Then, on top of those tax cuts, Ryan proposes to slash the corporate tax rate and the top income tax rate by ten points each, diverting hundreds of billions of dollars out of the revenue stream. He does promise to make up for this lost revenue by closing unspecified tax deductions. But note the asymmetry of his promises. The goodies (low, low tax rates) are specified. The mean stuff (fewer deductions) isn’t.
Meanwhile, Ryan does claim to save $1.6 trillion over the next decade by slashing all the other functions of government except defense and homeland security by a third, not even accounting for population growth. “All the other functions” means the FBI, highways, environmental protection, the Coast Guard, and so on. Ryan may think this vast category is stuffed with useless or over-funded programs, but, if he has any specific beliefs to this effect, he is keeping them to himself. Conveniently, this allows Republicans to plausibly deny that any particular program will lose funding. This also makes it far less likely that these cuts will actually occur.
Yes, but the courage of Ryan’s seriousness! It’s courageous to slash $4 trillion from the neediest in society and hand it to the rich. It’s very, very serious to predict that unemployment will be 2.8% in 2021 (as Ryan and the Heritage Foundation predict). But those are numbers, so Andrew won’t understand them. He only understands seriousness! And adult conversations! The math demands it even if it doesn’t add up!
And most importantly, where is the Democrat’s plan? Since plausibility, facts, and data clearly do not matter to Sullivan, here is the Democratic plan: Free unicorns for everyone. Top Marginal Rate at 220%! Abolish the military! There, the budget is fixed!
My plan is every bit as serious, likely to happen, factually based, and useful as the Ryan plan. I fully expect Andrew to be praising my genius, my courage, and my seriousness all day tomorrow.