April 24, 2011
The LA Times told readers that:
“Congress is on its first recess since Republican leaders unveiled a plan to end the federal deficit by dramatically changing Medicare, cutting other government programs and reducing taxes.”
Actually the Republicans never produced a plan to “end the federal deficit.”
They produced a plan that promised large tax cuts but did not identify any of the taxes that would have to be raised to offset the lost revenue. This is like saying they had a plan to fly to moon because they said they would build a rocket. The whole point is the specifics. How would they build a rocket? How would they raise taxes to meet their revenue targets?
It would have also been worth mentioning that the Congressional Budget Office projections for the Ryan plan imply that it would increase the cost of buying Medicare equivalent insurance policies by $30 trillion over the program’s 75-year planning period. This is approximately 6 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall and comes to almost $100,000 in additional costs for every man, woman, and child in the country. This money would be a transfer from retirees to the insurance and health care industries under the Ryan plan.
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