Ludicrous and Cruel (Krugman column)

[dtotire]

Ludicrous and Cruel
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 7, 2011



Many commentators swooned earlier this week after House Republicans, led by the Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, unveiled their budget proposals. They lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness.
Well, they should have waited until people who know how to read budget numbers had a chance to study the proposal. For the G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless.

How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column.
First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.

Specifically, the Ryan proposal trumpets the results of an economic projection from the Heritage Foundation, which claims that the plan’s tax cuts would set off a gigantic boom. Indeed, the foundation initially predicted that the G.O.P. plan would bring the unemployment rate down to 2.8 percent — a number we haven’t achieved since the Korean War. After widespread jeering, the unemployment projection vanished from the Heritage Foundation’s Web site, but voodoo still permeates the rest of the analysis.

In particular, the original voodoo proposition — the claim that lower taxes mean higher revenue — is still very much there. The Heritage Foundation projection has large tax cuts actually increasing revenue by almost $600 billion over the next 10 years.

A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

And about those spending cuts: leave health care on one side for a moment and focus on the rest of the proposal. It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen.

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1&hp

[CurtEastPoint]

1. I love his final paragraph.

"So the pundits who praised this proposal when it was released were punked. The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness."

[Doctor_J]

3. They weren't punked

They're lying, complicit right-wing hypocrites.

[Jim__]

2. I wish he would have named some of the swooning commentators.

These clowns need to be publicly called out.

[NothingRight]

4. GOP Tactics are clear, but what will be done about it?

Anyone with a shred of logic and intellect can pick apart this farce of a proposal, but, as Ryan himself said, This not not a budget, it's a cause. And it's a strategy to force the left to meet him well right of center.

The question at this point is what will the left do about it?

The CR debate has once again shown the inability of the left to deliver the message strong enough to expose the GOP fraud. Will we be able to hold our own against Ryan's "budget"?

[bertman]

5. I take issue with one statement in this EXCELLENT commentary:

"Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings."

I love the sentiment of that statement, but the REALITY is that we no longer have any assurance that a vote means anything. Even if the machine tallies it correctly, which might be considered a possibility, but not a guarantee (anyone remember 2000, 2004, Wisconsin yesterday?), the politicians have allegiance only to their financial backers NOT their electorate.

Otherwise, REC.

[dotymed]

7. Our only option

is to actually demonstrate in the streets. Become our own activists.

[Doctor_J]

8. As seen in WI, that is pointless

It's a feel-good exercise that accomplishes nothing

[dotymed]

9. Perhaps, on a national level

it will necessarily accomplish more. We can overcome..

[Stuart G]

6. kick