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Shutdown Looms As GOP "Courageously" Pushes Nauseating Budget
By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 5, 2011
Modified Apr 5, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Apr 5, 2011
Modified Apr 5, 2011
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House Speaker John Boehner emerged from a closed-door budget meeting with President Obama yesterday and announced that no deal had been reached, increasingly the likelihood of a government shutdown. House Republicans say they are open to approving another one-week stop-gap budget extension, but Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, also told the Times, "The White House has increased the likelihood of a shut down." The impasse comes as the House Budget Committee chairman, Republican Paul Ryan, released the proposed Republican budget, which cuddly conservative columnist David Brooks hails as "courageous" and "serious." So you know it must be really messed up.
The Republican budget, called The Path to Prosperity, would reduce federal spending by $6.2 trillion over ten years, and reduce the debt by $4.4 trillion, while cutting taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations and reconfiguring major federal health programs like like Medicare and Medicaid. In a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed explaining the budget, Ryan says, "This budget will build upon the historic welfare reforms of the late 1990s by converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that lets states create a range of options and gives Medicaid patients access to better care. It proposes similar reforms to the food-stamp program, ending the flawed incentive structure that rewards states for adding to the rolls."
The genius of Ryan's plan—which would give Medicare subscribers vouchers to pay for private insurance—is that it won't affect anyone who is currently 55 or older—the GOP's main constituents. Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress writes:
The idea here is that today’s old people—a very white group that’s also hostile to gay rights, and thus sort of predisposed to like conservative politicians—will also get to benefit from an extremely generous single-payer health care system. But younger people—a less white group that’s friendly to gay rights and thus predisposed to skepticism about conservative politicians—will get to pay the high taxes to finance old people’s generous single-payer health care system, but then we won’t get to benefit from it. This is in part in order to clear headroom in the budget so as to make gigantic tax cuts for rich people affordable.
According to the Center for Tax Justice analysis (PDF), ninety percent of Americans would actually pay higher taxes under his plan. At a press conference yesterday, Ryan saluted the freshman Tea Party Republicans in the House, telling reporters, "The new people did not come here for a political career. They came here for a cause. This isn’t a budget. This a cause.” Representative Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, dismissed it a "rigid ideological agenda that extends tax cuts to the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of America."
Today President Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, telling reporters that he believes a budget deal is still possible that will avert a government shutdown this weekend. According to the AP, Obama said "the only question standing the way of a shutdown is whether politics or ideology will block a deal." Inconceivable!
Tagged
budget
government shutdown
paul ryan
tea party
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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