Mitt Romney has been deliberately sketchy about what the federal budget will look like if he wins the election, but what we know about his plans is not good. Congressman Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, has had a lot more to say about the budget, and it's even scarier.
Ryan is the intellectual leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives on fiscal matters and chair of the House Budget Committee. Ryan's budget "expertise" is a major reason Romney picked him as his candidate for vice president. Ryan has summed up his ideas in his 2013 budget proposal, "The Path to Prosperity", and in earlier budget proposals which were passed by Republicans in the House, but died in the Senate. As noted in the statement about the election adopted by the UE General Executive Board on September 24, Ryan's budget may be a path to more prosperity and profits for the 1 percent, but for the rest of us it's the path to poverty. Ryan's plan calls for even more tax cuts for the rich, more military spending, and drastic cuts in nearly all areas of non-military spending.
ENDING MEDICARE
In addition to his budget's massive cuts to education, infrastructure and other essential needs, Ryan has become the symbol of Republican attacks on Medicare. Ryan's plan would replace Medicare with a government voucher whose amount would be arbitrarily "capped", with which senior citizens would be expected to purchase their own private health insurance. (Ryan initially called for making the voucher system mandatory, but under fierce criticism, he backtracked and said it would be optional.) When the cost of insurance exceeds the voucher cap - as it inevitably will - seniors will be on their own. The "cap" as proposed by Ryan would increase at the general inflation rate, not at the much higher rate of medical inflation. So Ryan's plan guarantees that, over time, seniors will be saddled with higher and higher out-of-pocket costs.
The Kaiser Family Foundation calculated that, by 2022, out-of-pocket medical expenses would eat up half of the Social Security check of the typical 65-year-old. Ryan also wants to gradually raise the Medicare eligibility age, by two months each year, until it's age 67.
Ryan's budget calls for turning Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) into "block grants", and reducing their future federal funding by nearly half. He would also tie funding levels to general inflation, not medical inflation, which means the underfunding would continually get worse. This would push more of the costs onto the states, which cannot afford it, and in all likelihood leave even more Americans with no healthcare.
Ryan's plan calls for reducing by one-fifth all federal spending other than defense, Social Security and health programs, starting in 2014. This would mean unprecedented cuts for state and local governments, which receive one-third of that money. It will mean massive cutbacks in just about all the things that government does, at all levels, that benefit ordinary people and make our communities livable.
PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY
"The Path to Prosperity" does not specifically address Social Security, but in Ryan's 2010 "Blueprint for America's Future" he called for privatization - diverting more than one-third of Social Security taxes into private investment accounts - a formula for destroying the program's solvency. Ryan said in September 2011 that he agrees with Texas Gov. Rick Perry that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme." That's a lie, but a lie that reveals how hostile Ryan is to the very concept of the Social Security system. Ryan's plan for privatizing Social Security is similar to what President George W. Bush proposed in 2005. If Bush's plan had passed and been immediately implemented, the 2008 financial crash would have wiped out most of what people had saved in their individual retirement accounts.
Like the tax policy Mitt Romney has put forth, Ryan's budget offers huge tax cuts, mostly to the wealthy and corporations, while imposing hardships on just about everyone else. Ryan would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, but would cancel the Obama tax cuts that helped lower-income people. His budget redistributes wealth from the poor and the working class to the rich, but does not get rid of the deficit. The numbers don't add up to a balanced budget.
Mitt Romney picked Ryan as his running mate apparently because Ryan's budget ideas are so popular among conservatives. Romney has embraced many of Ryan's proposals, including more military spending and bigger tax cuts for the wealthy. But ever the flip-flopper, Romney has made contradictory statements concerning how much he agrees with the Ryan budget. Now Romney and Ryan both dodge questions about their future budget plans by essentially saying, "Trust us, and we'll tell you after the election." But given the fact that Washington Republicans consider Ryan their "budget expert," we must assume that the budget offered by a President Romney would look an awful lot like the budget already proposed by Congressman Ryan.
RYAN AND RAND
One more thing we should know about Paul Ryan is where his ideas come from. Ryan has said that the greatest influence on his thinking, and the reason he got into politics, is Ayn Rand. Rand was a 20th century writer, mostly of novels, who taught that greed and selfishness are "virtue", while altruism - concern for others - is "evil". She viewed the poor, the unemployed and the disabled as "moochers" and "parasites", and opposed any form of social safety net. (But at the end of her life she collected Social Security checks and had her healthcare paid for by Medicare.) Rand condemned Christianity because it advocates compassion for the poor, something she totally rejected. In 2012, facing criticism from some of his fellow Catholics for his embrace of Rand's philosophy, Ryan publically distanced himself from Randism. But he has bragged in the past that he gives out copies of Rand's book Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, "... and I make all my interns read it."