Raise Your Hands: How Many Knew There are Really Four Budget Proposals?
The deal hatched at the eleventh hour last Friday night added $38 billion to the “compromise” (er, extortion) the House Republicans had extracted last winter by virtue of making the Bush tax cuts permanent. This was before the new Congress was even sworn in (i.e., Dems were still in charge, but President Obama lert the GOP call the shots anyway. The most recent “deal” had barely been struck when the so-called MSM began trumping the next round, the 2012 Ryan Trainwreck acting as if Paul Ryan’s “budget” was the only game in town. It never was. Yet, as Jeffrey Sach’s notes, the current budget has been a “dialogue among the wealthy.” But as Sachs points out, there really four budgets bandied about. Who knew? Certainly, the so-called MSM has said little to nothing about any options besides the Ryan sham of a “budget.” And its parroting of the corporate line is predictable but nonetheless scandalous. Let’s look at the four alternate realities described in the “plans.”
The Ryan Sham So-Called Budget
So, we’ll deal with extremist Ryan first. Dean Baker ended a commentary by saying this:
And the pundits call Ryan’s plan “serious.” Yes, it is very serious. It is a serious plan for taking tens of trillions of dollars from low-income and middle-income people and giving them away as tax breaks to the rich and to the health care industry. It is about as serious as a robber with a gun pointed at your head.
As I have mentioned elsewhere on BV, this plan can be summarized by two numbers. $4.2 Trillion in cuts coming out of the hide of the poor, the elderly and children; while, at the same time he sends a 4.37 trillion mash-note/giveaway to the rich and corporations. 4.37 Trillion! This shows that there is no real deficit closing intent here. It is massive wealth transfer from the “have littles” to the “have everythings.”
Ryan has taken the talking points and the agenda for his draconian wrecking-crew effort straight from the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation. So disreputable were the model, assumptions and data fundamental to Ryan’s proposal that, when real economists cried foul, Heritage scrubbed them from its website. First, the Ryan meat cleaver budget, far, far to the right of even many Republicans. He hammers the poor and in 2022 he hammers the old. No one is safe. Not those already under the old system or those younger because the system depends on evening out across younger and older retirees. That won’t happen with the Ryan Sham and so the old system will crumble, leaving seniors who are older with nothing long about 2022. On their own they will be uninsurable or will not be able to afford the price. So Alan Grayson was right. This really is the GOP plan: That we should all die sooner. But there is not rationing in GOPers ideology (snark). Meanwhile, under the Ryan Sham, many seniors in the privatized system could spend most of their income on health insurance, with no guarantee that all of their health care would be covered. This is a recipe for massive homelessness and starvation.
The Obama Budget
Second, Sachs says, is the Obama 2012 budget. Although I said earlier that Obama never sent a budget, what he really didn’t do is send a coherent budget reflective of a coherent progressive agenda. He didn’t send something he would promote and stick with. Certainly, he did not fight for it. instead, as Sachs points out the Obama budget is a “muddle” of Reagan era and Bush era tax-cutting and plugging the holes that creates at the expense of sensible programs. However, in the end, it wasn’t much worth fighting for.
It would keep most of the Reagan-era and Bush-era tax cuts in place. Like the Ryan proposal, Obama’s tax proposals would keep total taxes at around 20 percent of GDP. The result is a major long-term squeeze on vital programs such as community development, infrastructure, and job training. Also, Obama’s plan never closes the budget deficit, which remains as high as 3.1% of GDP in 2021.
Obama’s budget is barely talked about anywhere. Now we learn through the same disreputable media (today on NPR, with its almost daily promotion of Peter Peterson/Ryan Shams) that he is planning his own attack upon Medicare and Medicaid. But he already “streamlined” Medicare in the HCR bill!!! We “get to” hear how much he will sell us out this Wednesday. For now all we have is what was previously presented by the OMB on behalf of the President.
The Progressive Budget
Third is the People’s Budget, the Progressive Centrist Budget, just to the left of center, from the progressive caucus here. How many have ever heard about this proposal? This budget.
— Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
— Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
— Protects the social safety net
— Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)
We could have had an End of the Cold War Surplus. But we didn’t. Reagan continued to build a bloated, unsustainable, and anti-human budget/white collar welfare for defense contractors. In 1991, when it looked as if we really may finally benefit from the end of the Cold War, Bush-Daddy took care of that with the first Gulf War. And all it took was for Son-of-the-Bush to keep up the Carlyle, Halliburton, Blackwater, et al enrichment scheme called the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those two wars, combined with the ridiculously excellence tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, will yet render us into the dustbin of failed empires. But we will not learn, apparently.
Fourth Is Where Most Americans Converge, According To Polls.
The fourth “budget,” though it is not literally a budget is what budget we’d have if the citizens’ priorities. Sachs points out that “the republicans often say that they want Congress to respect the voice of the people.” Fat chance. If they believed that, they would end two (make that three) wars. They’d end the giveaways from under taxed and no-taxed entities, who do not even earn their keep. And they have the nerve to attack sneiors the way Paul Ryan did the other day! The public has let our national leaders know what they want — the rich and corporations to pay more taxes, to pay their fair share. Instead, they all suck up the nation’s resources and tax revenues like hogs at a trough. As Sachs also points out the public wants a public option. No such luck. The public lets our leaders know it wants out of Iraq and Afghanistan and cut other Pentagon spending lest we go the way of the Soviet Union and run our economy into the ground. We are ignored. On issue after issue, the public has ore sense and has a more humane agenda than do our leaders. But there is no chance that this fourth “option” will ever be implemented.
But the Congress isn’t listening to the American people — at least enough. Worse, as Dean Baker says our leaders hate us. It’s time our representatives do. And that’s not just the wistful thinking of a liberal. It’s want the people want. Tax the rich more. Make the corporate rate mean something by closing loopholes by which companies moaning about a 35% tax rate actually pay nothing. More than 60% want the tax-cutters hands off Medicare and Medicaid. Enough said. Do something!