Ryan's Budget

[elf]

Guess what, guys! Now we know who donated his heart to Mr. Cheney!

[genglandoh]

So, for the first two years, Ryan's plan is actually more expensive?!

And then after that?.... oh, who are we kidding, we know that budget projections are never good for more than two years... and Ryan's plan is particularly shaky simply because so much of it is simply hocus-pocus.

I do agree that it is very hard to forecast the revenue numbers, but spending is something the Government should have control over so that is why I tend to focus on spending.

PS I think the President’s Budget will miss his 2012 revenue goal because they are based on a high GDP growth rate.
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...2012&highlight

[John Smith]

I do agree that it is very hard to forecast the revenue numbers, but spending is something the Government should have control over so that is why I tend to focus on spending.

PS I think the President’s Budget will miss his 2012 revenue goal because they are based on a high GDP growth rate.
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...2012&highlight

I have a simpler method. I look at the track record of those doing the predicting. One group told me the '93 Clinton budget would destroy the economy. They told us they KNEW Saddam had WMD's, and where they were. Shortly before Wall Street came tumbling down they told us Wall Street was in good shape and would not come tumbling down.

I'm not inclined to listen to these people.

We hae a group of people who feels Bush bears no responsibility for the financial shape of this nation, as he is no longer president. Under their logic, Hitler no longer bears respnsibility for WWII.

I keep hearing from that group that "Obama's policies are hurting America" but I can't seem to get from them what policies he's managed to get through congress and how those policies are hurting America. Dodd/Frank passed, but the Republican controlled House has done everything it can to not fund it, and the senate has blocked appointees under it. Obacare has so far not brought any of the nasty predictions its opponents predicted, and the stimulus, though less successful that it had been hoped, seems to have been a positive influence on our economy.

I suspect saving GM and Chrysler has worked out better than failing to do so would have worked out.

If our president didn't have to deal with Republicans who are more interested in defeating him politically than helping the nation, we would be well underway now with the rebuilding/modernizing our infrastructure using materials made in the USA, and that would be a large number of jobs in the private sector. We would also be further along the path of getting off oil, which is a really good thing to do.

The very first post I ever made on an internet forum concerned itself with importing so many goods, rather than making them here. Money, in my view, ends up in the country of manufacture, just like it ends up in the country where the oil comes from.

Those people who worship Reagan should be worshipping Clinton, who actually did balance the budget.

A simple principle: our economy demands a viable middle class. Any budget cuts that make it harder for the middle class to consume are simply bad for our economy.

[David G]

Here's E.J. Dionne's comments on the Ryan plan. He says it fairly succinctly:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...eaS_story.html

Rep. Paul Ryan made absolutely clear that he is not now and never was interested in deficit reduction. After a couple of years of being lauded by deficit hawks as the man prepared to make hard choices, he proposed a budget that would not end deficits until 2040 but would cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over a decade while also extending all of the Bush tax cuts, adding an additional $5.4 trillion to the deficit. Ryan would increase military expenditures and then eviscerate the rest of the federal government.


Oh yes, Ryan claims he’d make up for the losses from his new tax cuts with “tax reform” but offered not a single detail. A “plan” with a hole this big is not a plan at all. Ryan’s main interest is in cutting the top income tax rate to 25 percent from the current 35 percent. His message: Solving the deficit problem isn’t nearly as important as (1) continuing and expanding benefits for the wealthy and (2) disabling the federal government.


Robert Greenstein, president of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is tough on deficits, careful in his use of numbers, and measured in his choice of words. These traits make his assessment of Ryan’s proposal all the more instructive.

“It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history),” Greenstein wrote. “Specifically, the Ryan budget would impose extraordinary cuts in programs that serve as a lifeline for our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and over time would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance or become underinsured.”


Thanks to Ryan, we now know that this election is not about deficits at all. It is about whether we will respond to growing inequalities of wealth and income by creating even larger inequalities of wealth and income.

My own sense is that the Republican budget takes us beyond foolish, and into catastrophic. It is the exact opposite of what we need to do to nurture this fragile recovery we've got going on. The austerity measures it includes will turn us into another Greece, continue the gutting of the middle class, and turn this into even more of a neo-feudal society. Not what the founding fathers had in mind, methinks.

[David G]

The Democrat's analysis:

http://dccc.org/blog/entry/fact_chec...th_falsehoods/

[David G]

Another liberal take. Saying the Democrats can't wait to run against this budget:

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_paul_ryan_taint/

[Paul Girouard]

Spin cycle's on HIGH alert I see!

[Lew Barrett]

I do agree that it is very hard to forecast the revenue numbers, but spending is something the Government should have control over so that is why I tend to focus on spending.

PS I think the President’s Budget will miss his 2012 revenue goal because they are based on a high GDP growth rate.
http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...2012&highlight

Why does Ryan's take on the budget increase defense spending? No savings to be had there at all?

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Spin cycle's on HIGH alert I see!

It's "run what ya' brung" at this site. What ya' got besides a raging desire to check everyone's spelling?

[David G]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...n_budget_.html

Few things shock anymore, but it came as a bit of a surprise last week when Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, revealed how little he knows about the making of the budget.

The moment occurred on March 29, when Ryan told a National Journal forum in Washington, “We don’t believe the generals are giving us their true budget.”

Ryan backpedaled after Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he and the other chiefs didn’t appreciate being called liars. “I really misspoke,” Ryan said on CNN—invoking the word often used by politicians who say what they mean, then realize they’ve sounded foolish. He added, “I was clumsy in how I was describing the point I was trying to make.”

He went on, “What I was attempting to say is, President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first … and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number. We think it should have been the other way around.”

That was an odd thing for him to say. Ryan is the author of the Republicans’ alternative budget plan, a much-bandied contender for the No. 2 slot on Mitt Romney’s presidential ticket, and, according to David Brooks, “the most intellectually formidable member of the House.” Surely he knows that the process he finds so objectionable—the president comes up with a budget, the generals fit their plans around it—is the way things have always worked, and for good reasons.

The first reason is obvious: The American military answers to civilian control. This principle has been hammered into officers, at every step of their training, for at least the past 60 years when Gen. MacArthur challenged President Truman and went up in flames. Almost every general since has accepted, even welcomed, the arrangement.

The second is a bit subtler but still basic: This is the nature of a budget, not just for the Pentagon, but for every government agency, every company, every household. A budget is a tool for managing resources. Everyone wants more money, but the pot is finite; a budget resolves the tension.

[wardd]

even during ww2 there were budgetary constraints on military action

[David G]

From Bloomberg --

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...-founders.html

Are we really talking about the elimination of broad swaths of government services not to protect our children from mountains of debt but to help offset another tax cut for the wealthy? Yup.