Rep. Paul Ryan appeared on this Tuesday's Morning Joe and defended his latest terrible budget proposal which is more or less a repeat of the last one and that Republicans are apparently going to be willing to support again, despite the fact that
March 20, 2012

Rep. Paul Ryan appeared on this Tuesday's Morning Joe and defended his latest terrible budget proposal which is more or less a repeat of the last one and that Republicans are apparently going to be willing to support again, despite the fact that once most Americans get a chance to take a good look at what he's proposing, reject the type of policies he's advocating for.

Think Progress has done a good deal of fact checking on this and flagged this portion of Ryan's appearance on MSNBC -- Paul Ryan’s Budget Includes $3 Trillion Giveaway To Corporations, The Rich:

The budget unveiled by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) this morning includes substantial changes to the American tax code, both for corporations and individuals. Ryan’s tax plan shrinks the number of income tax brackets from six to two, with marginal tax rates set at 10 percent and 25 percent. He repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), slices the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and repeals all of the health care taxes contained in the Affordable Care Act. It also repeals the repatriation tax on profits corporations earn overseas then bring back to the United States.

In all, those tax breaks amount to a $3 trillion giveaway to the richest Americans and corporations, according to the Tax Policy Center. Repealing the repatriation tax would add roughly $130 billion to that.

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ryan insisted that the plan would generate the same amount of revenue as the government currently receives. In true Ryan form, though, he wouldn’t say how:

RYAN: We’re taking the tax system and reforming it along the way this new bipartisan compromise and consensus is showing. Get rid of the special interest loopholes, special deductions, lower everybody’s tax rates, bring in at least as much revenue to the government but grow the economy and create jobs, and get spending under control so we can pay off this debt.

SCARBOROUGH: So you say that you want to bring as much revenue into the government even with lower tax rates. There are obviously only a few ways to do that as far as eliminating tax loopholes, whether you’re talking about the home mortgage loophole, the health care loophole, or the charitable interest deductions. Which one of those do you eliminate?

RYAN: We want to do this in the light of day and in front of everybody. So the Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of the tax system, sent us the plan here, which is a 10 and 25 percent bracket for individuals and small businesses, and then they want to have hearings and, in light of day, show how they would go about doing this.

The taxes Ryan wants to repeal all primarily impact the richest Americans and corporations. Repealing the repatriation tax, as Republicans have attempted multiple times since taking control of the House in 2011, amounts to a huge giveaway to corporations. And ending the AMT and investment taxes from the ACA while dropping the top income tax rate would give massive tax breaks to the rich. That isn’t surprising — it’s virtually identical to what Ryan attempted in last year’s budget, which he called the “Path to Prosperity.”

And here's more from their site on Ryan's budget -- The 5 Worst Things About The House GOP’s Budget:

After his last attempt at a budget went down in flames last year, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) unveiled the House GOP’s new budget this morning, painting it as a sensible plan to reform the nation’s tax code and reduce the debt while maintaining entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Yet again, however, Ryan and the GOP have the social safety net and Medicare in their sights, and yet again, they’re attempting to pass the cost of massive tax breaks for corporations and the rich off to middle and lower-income Americans.

Here are the five worst things about Ryan’s budget... Read on...

And on the number of uninsured it could result in -- ESTIMATE: At Least 48 Million Could Become Uninsured Under Paul Ryan’s Budget:

Since Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) new budget eliminates $1.5 trillion from the Affordable Care Act, cuts $770 billion from Medicaid and reduces Medicare spending by $200 billion, Ezra Klein points out that “it would be very interesting to see an estimate of the uninsured population under Ryan’s budget.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of Ryan’s plan does not provide those numbers, but a rough back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that at least 48 million Americans could lose their health insurance... Read on...

And as Think Progress also did some fact checking on, Ryan's budget doesn't actually do anything to address the problem with our national debt, but instead, makes it worse:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released the GOP’s new budget this morning, and in doing so, he touted it as a plan to make America’s level of debt more sustainable. “We’ve shared with Americans a specific plan of action that cuts spending, pays off the debt and gets our economy back on the path to prosperity,” Ryan said.

The problem with Ryan’s rhetoric is that his plan fails to match it. By giving massive tax breaks to corporations and the top one percent and preserving unsustainable levels of defense spending, the House GOP’s plan to reduce the debt would fail to reduce the debt. In fact, because it assumes levels of revenue that are pure fantasy under his tax proposals, the plan would actually increase the debt, according to an analysis by Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden:

But the House budget’s entire claim to deficit reduction is built on the foundation of those fantasy revenue levels. Without them, the debt goes up, not down. In fact, with all the House budget’s tax cuts properly accounted for, revenue would average just 15.3 percent of GDP from 2013 through 2022, not 18.3 percent. The result: deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.

The national debt, measured as a share of GDP, would never decline, surpassing 80 percent by 2014, and 90 percent by 2022. By comparison, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, released in February, would stabilize the debt by 2015, and bring it down to 76 percent by 2022.

And last but not least from their reporting, we have this -- Ryan Budget Pads Big Oil’s Pockets While Americans Pay At The Pump:

American families have been plagued by higher oil and gasoline prices over the past several years despite a significant increase in domestic oil production and rigs, and decline in consumption. But while high prices threaten the economy and family budgets, they enrich American oil companies with huge profits. Yet it appears that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed FY 2013 budget resolution would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion. And his budget would cut billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil and help protect middle-class families from volatile energy prices as well as create jobs. In short, the Ryan budget compounds the cost of high oil and gasoline prices on the middle class. Read on...

What's disgusting is that this liar who pretends that he wants to protect our social safety nets while advocating for privatizing them and who is looking out for the interest of the 1 percent is treated by our media as some sort of wise man that Republicans should actually consider running for president or who should be considered as a vice presidential candidate. If Mitt Romney wants to assure he doesn't have a chance in hell of being elected, I say, bring him on. Here's your perfect candidate to run with to show you're as out of touch with average working Americans as most people paying attention think you are already.

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