Day: April 6, 2011

Ryan’s Unicorns

Krugman on Ryan:

Ryan is claiming that unemployment will plunge right away; that by 2015 it will be down to the levels at the peak of the 1990s boom (and far below anything achieved under the sainted Ronald Reagan); and that by 2021 it will be below 3 percent, a level we haven’t seen in more than half a century.

[…]

According to the CBO analysis, a typical senior would end up spending more than twice as much of his or her own income on health care as under current law. As Dean Baker points out, this means that seniors would end up paying most of their income for health care. Again, right.

[…]

Ryan is assuming that everything aside from health and SS can be squeezed from 12 percent of GDP now to 3 ½ percent of GDP. That’s bigger than the assumed cut in health care spending relative to baseline; it accounts for all of the projected deficit reduction, since the alleged health savings are all used to finance tax cuts. And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Not explained.

Now that’s what I call a truly serious and courageous budget proposal. Obviously it won’t pass, but it’s not meant to. It is meant to move the debate rightward. And it already has. Dread Liberal Mouthpiece the Boston Globe has already run a “Where’s the Democrat Version of Destroy Medicare?” editorial. The implicit expectation is, again, that Serious People know the sensible outcome is, by definition, in-between Ryan’s plan and status quo: thus the GOP moves policy ever rightward while The Democrat simply stays in defensive crouch, hoping to scratch out minor concessions along the way. Forever.

How’s that been working out for you?

Ryan’s Unicorns

Tax Increases and Giveaways to Big Banks

Ryan’s view of an ideal America on the Path to Prosperity really is a winning combination; aside from the top line items of eliminating Medicare, Medicaid, and (ultimately) Social Security, the GOP Vision of an America they want to live in includes:

…lurking in the plan is a giant giveaway to Wall Street […]. Specifically, Ryan wants to repeal two key provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill that allow regulators to identify systemically important financial institutions and unwind them if they go bankrupt. This means that in a future financial crisis, regulators will face a Hobson’s choice between letting the financial system collapse and replaying the ad hoc and unjust bailouts of 2008.

[…]

[Ryan’s plan also] promises to raise the same quantity of tax revenue as the government got during the George W Bush years, but he wants to push marginal tax rates on the rich even lower than they were at that time. He doesn’t spell out how, exactly, he plans to make up the lost revenue and that’s because he wants to obscure the fact that it’ll have to come from the middle class.

Who can possibly argue with that entirely sensible approach? Why, unemployment will be almost certainly be at negative eleventy percent by 2014 under policies like those.

Tax Increases and Giveaways to Big Banks