While everyone else is discussing Paul Ryan’s black girlfriend from college (I kid you not), I thought it might be a good opportunity to examine the real love of his life: cutting programs for the disenfranchised.
See, Ryan’s bread and butter is slashing “government spending” (a bloodless term that means programs for the elderly, sick, and poor). It gives him a bigger hard on than all those ridiculous P90X workout routines he won’t shut up about. [Since when does anyone care if their congressman is ripped?] And has made him the poster boy for the new “Libertarian” movement that want to see government reduced to nothing and the deficit eliminated.
There’s just one problem: his plan doesn’t reduce the deficit. It actually increases the deficit. Yes, it will reduce the size of the government (it will place a much higher burden on old people to pay for their health insurance while also laying off thousands of government workers) but it will actually add to the deficit.
How? Because all of the savings in the “Paul Ryan plan” get immediately funneled into tax cuts for the wealthy. All of the cuts he proposes combined will equal roughly 1 trillion dollars, but all of the tax cuts he wants to make will total over 4 trillion dollars. That’s right, because the biggest “deficit hawk” out there is trying to give outrageous tax breaks to the wealthy—–many of whom already pay a lower tax rate than you do—–he’s actually increasing the deficit by three trillion more than he’s cutting it.
So even all these Tea Partiers who seem to care first, foremost, and exclusively about the deficit (oddly coinciding with the second Barack Obama became president) can’t support Ryan now. Of course, I doubt it will make a difference to them, but, hopefully, it makes one to you.