The Ryan budget: "vague" promises, "fewer jobs, greater insecurity, and shrinking opportunities"

[ProSense]

Dispelling the Mystery of Ryan's Republican Budget Cuts

Representative Paul Ryan has a budget plan to remake our country – a blueprint Republicans love. It promises big new tax cuts for the rich, but remains vague about draconian spending cuts affecting most Americans. In readable briefs, SSN scholars clear up the mysteries.

The Big Picture

The Ryan blueprint for America's fiscal future aims to cut domestic spending by 4.3 trillion dollars and at the same time reduce taxes by 4.2 trillion dollars – especially through tax cuts on business and the most affluent Americans....The tax and spending overhauls laid out in the Ryan budget add up to a blueprint for permanent austerity, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson explain. Supporters may call Ryan's plan "a path to prosperity," but that would hold true only for the very rich, for millionaires and billionaires who would be showered with another round of generous tax cuts. For everyone else, for middle-class and lower-income Americans, the result would be fewer jobs, greater insecurity, and shrinking opportunities...Last month's "Nuns on the Bus" tour through many of America's heartland states and cities highlighted the devastating impact the Ryan budget would have on poor people and low-income families...

The Impact on the States

All fifty U.S. states have a great deal on the line as debates rage about taxes and social expenditures in Washington DC. The Ryan plan backed by House Republicans would sharply reduce federal grants to the states for Medicaid, education, job training, and safety net programs that help low-income Americans. In each state, the worrisome consequences would play out a bit differently, depending on the economy and social needs of that state....For all fifty states, tough trade-offs would have to be faced if the Ryan plan to restructure the vast federal Medicaid program goes into effect....Millions of beneficiaries would get less care or lose eligibility altogether. And for governors and state legislatures, crunch time would hit especially hard in economic downturns – when people need extra help, but state revenues decline. Today, the federal government is doing more to help the states with Medicaid costs during hard economic times, but that would not be true under the Ryan plan.

The Impact on Medicare and Social Security

Medicare and Social Security play a vital role for older Americans. Without the guarantees these social-insurance programs provide, many seniors would not be able to get adequate health care or afford to retire; many would live in poverty or have to ask for extra help from their children or grandchildren. But the Ryan budget proposes a radical restructuring of Medicare that would greatly reduce its assured benefits for older Americans; and the plan also recommends special procedures to "fast-track" possible cutbacks in Social Security benefits. The possible changes to Social Security are analyzed by Nancy Altman, Eric Kingson, and Ben Veghte. SSN scholar Theodore Marmor explains why the Ryan plan to turn Medicare into vouchers to purchase private insurance will not work; and Larry Polikva explains why the proposed changes in Medicare would move in the wrong direction.

http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/node/1824

Krugman: The Ryan Role
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021122504

[Raven]

1. Revise all those Retirement Calculators! All

the folks in their 40's and 50's who have been religiously saving for their retirements based upon the assumption that SS and Medicare will be there for them, better go back to the drawing board.

[ProSense]

2. Romney is nuts for selecting Ryan.

Then again, he had no choice.