There is so much to complain about in Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan that I hardly know where to begin, but I am going to start with the fact that we have a Democratic president. What makes Paul Ryan think that he can get a Democrat to destroy Medicare and Medicaid, eliminate all taxes on foreign profits, lower the top marginal income tax rate to 25%, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, raise defense spending, decimate spending on research and development, and social spending, and add hundreds of billions to the deficit? And he wants to do it by reneging on the deal the Republicans made with the administration during the debt ceiling fiasco, while ignoring the sequestration that resulted from the failure of the Supercommittee to strike a deal.
This isn’t a budget for a divided government. It’s an ideological budget that bears no relationship to reality. The media should respond with indignation and derision. It’s bad enough that the numbers don’t add up. Even if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire and there is no new Medicare doctor reimbursement fix, the CBO estimates that Ryan’s budget will add $240 billion to the debt over the next decade. Meanwhile, it will provide a tax cut of at least $150,000 per year to our wealthiest families. That’s over a million dollar giveaway over the next decade, and then you can start compounding the interest.
It’s bad enough that this budget would be a disaster for the vast majority of Americans. But it bothers me more that the Republicans continue to act like they have some mandate to force their ideology on a Democratic Senate and administration. They control the House. That’s it. They have a responsibility to help the president govern. And all they do is lie and obstruct and give us ridiculous plans that no Democrat could ever support.
We need a national conversation on what should be expected from a minority party in a divided government, because what we’re getting from the GOP is just obnoxious gridlock and a bad credit rating. And can they ever keep their word? What kind of party makes a deal and then reneges on the deal at the first opportunity?
