The Truth About the Ryan Budget Proposal

Morning Plum: In GOP, 47 percenter-ism is alive and well

By Greg Sargent April 4 at 9:18 am
A new report to be released in coming days by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that an astonishing 69 percent of the budget cuts in Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint would hit programs designed to ”serve people of limited means.”



CBPP calculates that Ryan’s new budget would level $3.3 trillion in cuts to such programs over 10 years — even as Republicans have been working to recast the party as concerned about poverty.



Ryan’s plan, which purports to balance the budget in 10 years, has no chance of going anywhere. But it matters as a statement of continuing GOP priorities, as a blueprint for the GOP’s vision for the economy and of government’s role — or lack of one — in combatting poverty and inequality and boosting economic mobility. It will, and should, figure in the midterm elections as a point of contrast with the Democratic agenda — raising the minimum wage, pay equity, early childhood education, infrastructure spending to create jobs, unemployment insurance, and of course the continued implementation of Obamacare, including the Medicaid expansion wherever it is moving forward.



The CBPP, which is liberal-leaning, previewed the new report in a blog post. The report itself will spell out the methodology. But the short version is that CBPP assumes that cuts the Ryan plan makes to particular budget categories — but that aren’t distributed among specific programs — would be imposed equally across all programs in any given category, including those not designed to help low-income Americans.



Using this method, CBPP calculates that the Ryan budget would cut $2.7 trillion from Medicaid and subsidies to help people buy private insurance, leaving 40 million people uninsured by 2024. It would cut food stamps by $137 billion over 10 years; Pell Grants by up to $125 billion; $385 billion from mandatory programs helping poor and moderate income Americans such as SSI; and so on.



The overall 69 percent figure is comparable to CBPP’s calculation that Ryan’s 2013 budget would get 66 percent of its cuts from programs for people with low or moderate incomes, and its calculation that Ryan’s 2012 budget would get 62 percent of its cuts for such programs. And so deep and harmful cuts to the safety net remain every bit as central to the GOP’s chief economic blueprint, despite the rising volume of GOP rhetoric about crafting a poverty agenda. No problem there, however: Ryan explicitly sells this budget as a means to expand opportunity, and claims its deep cuts to the safety net would “empower” those benefiting from it.



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Update: I’m told that it’s not accurate to characterize the percentage of cuts as rising from previous budgets, because of differing baselines, though they are comparable, so I’ve edited the above to correct. The broader point — that 47 percenter-ism has as much of a hold over the GOP as ever, despite promises of a poverty agenda — obviously stands.




A new report to be released in coming days by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that an astonishing 69 percent of the budget cuts in Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint would hit programs designed to ”serve people of limited means.”



CBPP calculates that Ryan’s new budget would level $3.3 trillion in cuts to such programs over 10 years — even as Republicans have been working to recast the party as concerned about poverty.



Ryan’s plan, which purports to balance the budget in 10 years, has no chance of going anywhere. But it matters as a statement of continuing GOP priorities, as a blueprint for the GOP’s vision for the economy and of government’s role — or lack of one — in combatting poverty and inequality and boosting economic mobility. It will, and should, figure in the midterm elections as a point of contrast with the Democratic agenda — raising the minimum wage, pay equity, early childhood education, infrastructure spending to create jobs, unemployment insurance, and of course the continued implementation of Obamacare, including the Medicaid expansion wherever it is moving forward.



The CBPP, which is liberal-leaning, previewed the new report in a blog post. The report itself will spell out the methodology. But the short version is that CBPP assumes that cuts the Ryan plan makes to particular budget categories — but that aren’t distributed among specific programs — would be imposed equally across all programs in any given category, including those not designed to help low-income Americans.



Using this method, CBPP calculates that the Ryan budget would cut $2.7 trillion from Medicaid and subsidies to help people buy private insurance, leaving 40 million people uninsured by 2024. It would cut food stamps by $137 billion over 10 years; Pell Grants by up to $125 billion; $385 billion from mandatory programs helping poor and moderate income Americans such as SSI; and so on.



The overall 69 percent figure is comparable to CBPP’s calculation that Ryan’s 2013 budget would get 66 percent of its cuts from programs for people with low or moderate incomes, and its calculation that Ryan’s 2012 budget would get 62 percent of its cuts for such programs. And so deep and harmful cuts to the safety net remain every bit as central to the GOP’s chief economic blueprint, despite the rising volume of GOP rhetoric about crafting a poverty agenda. No problem there, however: Ryan explicitly sells this budget as a means to expand opportunity, and claims its deep cuts to the safety net would “empower” those benefiting from it.



********************************************************



Update: I’m told that it’s not accurate to characterize the percentage of cuts as rising from previous budgets, because of differing baselines, though they are comparable, so I’ve edited the above to correct. The broader point — that 47 percenter-ism has as much of a hold over the GOP as ever, despite promises of a poverty agenda — obviously stands.