Ryan's proposal will increase inequality and the deficit

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and other deficit hawks are using scare tactics to achieve the long held Republican goal of dismantling Medicare and Medicaid and other social programs. Social Security cannot be far behind.

His budget bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor, which has been provided by the federal government with society’s clear assent since 1965. The elderly, in particular, would be cut adrift by Mr. Ryan. People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

 Fully two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs.It would:

• cut food stamps by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next 10 years, increasing hunger among the poor. 
• cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether.
• remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start
• slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills.

Ryan's analysis that profligate spending on the poor and middle class is bankrupting America is a lie.

Only a decade ago the United States was running a surplus projected to be $5.2 trillion over ten years.

The current and projected deficits are largely the product of Bush era tax cuts (1.65 trillion that went mainly to the super rich) two wars ($1 trillion and counting) and the Great Recession which was caused by the Republican's manic pursuit of financial deregulation. See the graph and youtube video below for more details.

Ryan supported every single one of these deficit driving policies making his concern over the deficit impossible to swallow.

Ryan also proposes $2.9 trillion in tax cuts by lowering tax rates for the rich and corporations. People with incomes over $1 million would receive average tax cuts of $125,000.

This is not a serious deficit reduction plan. It is a budget that accelerates the nation's redistribution of wealth and income, already at historic highs, to the haves by undermining the nation's social compact with its poor and working middle classes.