As many long time readers will recall, there once was a time I was an active member of the GOP. That was in the days before (1) the GOP became a sectarian party controlled by far right Christianist extremists and (2) when fiscal conservatism meant more than smoke and mirrors and targeting the most needy in society for heartless financial brutalization. It was also back before the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves was a matter of sacred creed within the GOP. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that calls out the GOP plan that will likely continue to be pressed after a week's reprieve of a government shutdown for what it really is. Of course the other aspect of the push for fiscal austerity is the fact that if the GOP gets the massive spending cuts it wants, it could kill the fragile and mediocre economic recovery - something that seems to be occurring in the UK. Here are highlights from Krugman's column:*
[T]he 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.
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First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
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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.
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It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen. How drastic? . . . . less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
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And then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance. The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs. . . . the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
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And that neither should nor will happen. 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.
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In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous. And it’s also cruel.
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In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
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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.
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As always the party of supposed family values and which claims to honor Christian values utterly disregards the Gospel message of caring for the poor and the unfortunate. Instead, it's a case of lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy and allowing the poor to go hungry and without health care. What would Jesus think of this? Nothing positive I suspect. GOP = hypocrisy.
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