Conservative Budget Lunacy

Who is our country for? Is this a country for We, the People, where all of us are banded together to protect and empower each other, together? Or is this a country where a powerful few reap all the benefits, and the rest of us are little more than "the help?" That is what the coming budget/deficit/debt/shutdown battles are about. more »

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Rep. Paul Ryan's getting a lot of attention for a chart he's using to publicize the new Republican budget:

You know what's funny? I was just projecting the effect of that budget on the average retiree's household budget:

I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. These are the real numbers. The two charts look alike, but they tell very different stories.

The green ink shows the income you would have after retirement under the current system, which comes with guaranteed Medicare coverage. The red ink shows just how much you'll be in the red if the Republican budget is put into place. Even if you turned your whole Social Security check over to the health insurance company, it wouldn't be enough. If you wanted Medicare-like coverage you'd be forced to give a private insurance company tens of thousands of dollars more in premiums than you'll receive in Social Security and "voucher" benefits.

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With Congress furiously negotiating as the clock ticks towards government shutdown, the focus of the 2011 budget talks is almost all on how much spending to cut -- precisely what our job-starved economy doesn't need right now. more »

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How often have you looked up from a "news report" in disgust at the way our modern news media tries to be cover for conservative lunacy and extremism? There is a template that stamps out the false equivalences: "Both sides do it." They find something extreme written by a commenter on an obscure "liberal" website and equate it with something wild that several Republican Senators might say. more »

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Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan will push rising health care costs onto those least able to afford them – the elderly, the disabled and the poor. more »

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Back when I analyzed health plans and other benefits for a living, I asked a famous CEO what his goals were for the corporation's employee benefit plan. "I want to give them less and make them think it's more," he said.

The new Republican budget proposes to radically restructure the country's relationship with its citizens. They're using bogus economics to confuse people into thinking these extreme cuts will somehow leave them more money. But they're really offering less - much less.

We'll deal with the politics later. The policy is astounding enough. But we'll throw in a little context: The top 25 hedge fund managers made a collective $22 billion last year. If they had been taxed under the same rules as cops, firefighters, nurses, and teachers, and if the President's proposed tax changes for the wealthiest earners had passed, these 25 people alone might reduced the Federal deficit by more than five billion dollars in a single year! But Rep. Ryan and his party prevented that from happening.

"Party of deficit reduction"? Gosh, I don't think so.

A Radical Attack

Since all the specifics aren't in, we ran some rough preliminary numbers. Here's what we found: Within ten years of this plan taking effect, most Americans would be spending all of their Social Security income just to pay for their health care or going without coverage.

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For most people the "American Dream" is to be in the middle class, or to raise yourself up to be in the middle class. And people used to expect that things would get better over time for all of us. But today more people are going the other way. Many people are finding it harder just to get by and stay even, and expect that things will get even worse for their kids. more »

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Bloggers always wonder why Democrats couldn’t get anything done even when they had a solid majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, while Republicans get everything they want even when they are in the minority. Take the current budget negotiations, for example. more »

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