Highlights of Ryan's New Budget

I thought I'd take the time to highlight the high (or low) points in Rep. Ryan's GOP Budget (PDF):

• Plans to cut top corporate and individual tax rates to 25%
• Claims to create 1 million new jobs in the next year.
  
• Despite this, Ryan claims his budget will result in only 4% unemployment by as early as 2015
• Says "average" worker will make $1000 more a year by "unleashing prosperity and economic security"
  
• Claims to implement "locks and spending controls"
  
• Says Health Care Reform should be repealed, but doesn't say what it should be replaced with
• Proposes that our energy problem is solved merely by drilling for more fossil fuels in the United States
• Claims to "end Corporate Welfare"
  
• Calls current Medicaid system "onerous"
• Ryan also complains that there is too much of a disincentive for states to cut Medicare
• Ryan proposes turning Medicaid into block grants with minimal federal requirements
  
• Ryan says Medicare is the cause of rising health care costs, not the victim of it
• Ryan proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher system, where seniors can choose one of several private insurance choices once they turn 65.
  
• Ryan also "protects" current seniors from this change

So here are my editorial thoughts:

1 million new jobs next year? That's only 83,333 jobs per month. Obama has beaten that in 5 of the last 6 months. I suppose he could mean 1 million additional jobs on top of Obama, but he said that his plan would create "2.5 additional jobs" by the end of the decade later. He didn't say "additional" there.

One should note that $1,000 average gain per family isn't that great. Just an example: If you had 1,000 families, you could have a $1,000 average gain in income if one family increases their income by $1 million and the other 999 get nothing.

On the spending locks, I'm not exactly sure how Ryan intends to do this since generally one Congress cannot bind the next.

Ending corporate welfare is nice. Too bad the GOP votes against it whenever they get the chance to. He mostly emphasizes "ending bailouts," even though TARP isn't actually costing us any money anymore.

Ryan's plan for Medicaid is pretty simple: it's to make it easy for, and even to encourage, states to seriously cut back their Medicaid rolls. If individual states gut Medicaid, then that's fewer matching dollars the federal government has to send to the states.

I think his changes to Medicare are self explanatory. He sugar coats is by saying that it's merely the same choice members of congress already have! Of course, there is no guarantee that the vouchers will actually cover the cost of private insurance, and unless Ryan plans to impose serious cost controls (doubtful), it is likely that the cost of that insurance will be beyond just about any senior's ability to pay for it, even with the voucher. Of course, then again, Ryan claims that the only reason why health care is expensive is because of Medicare anyway, so I guess he thinks by turning it into vouchers, health care costs will magically drop.

It's also funny how he stresses that he will "protect" current (or soon to be) seniors from this change. However, if this change is so great, why do they need to be "protected?" That's right, cause it's not that great.

Ryan's proposed budget will result in soaring deficits or higher taxes on the middle class (if he tries to keep his tax changes revenue neutral, which he claims to do), and will likely mean the end of health coverage for millions of America's poor and elderly. Not to mention going all in on fossil fuels for our energy needs.

It should also be noted that, as bad as this budget is, it would still violate the GOP's new Balanced Budget Amendment. Oops.