How the GOP Is Committing Political Suicide With Ryan's Extremist Budget Plan

At first blush, it's difficult to grasp why all but four Republicans in the House would go on record endorsing a budget plan that would cost the economy millions of jobs, effectively end Medicare and result in deep cuts to Social Security, roll back new regulations on Wall Street and raise taxes on the middle class while slashing the rates paid by big business and the wealthy. It's especially tough to understand given that we're entering the 2012 campaign season, and their budget has no chance of becoming law.

But that's what happened last week when the GOP-controlled House passed a budget outline based on the radical plan hatched by Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.

A poll conducted last week found that, “when voters learn almost anything about [the Ryan plan], they turn sharply and intensely against it.” And why wouldn't they? According to an analysis by the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the Republicans' “roadmap” would “end most of government other than Social Security, health care, and defense by 2050,” while providing the “largest tax cuts in history” for the wealthy.

Not wealthy yourself? Well that's too bad, because the plan would also “place a new consumption tax on most goods and services, a measure that would increase taxes on most low- and middle-income families.” According to the Tax Policy Center, about three-quarters of Americans — people who earn between $20,000 and $200,000 per year — would face tax increases if the GOP's scheme became law.

The New York Times called the budget, “the most regressive social legislation in many decades.”

In addition to making “entitlement” a dirty word, the Ryan bulldozer would go much further in knocking down government programs to achieve its goals. It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next 10 years, almost certainly increasing hunger among the poor. It would cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether. It would remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start, and slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills.

Conservatives are spinning this monstrosity as a “serious” attempt to address growing budget deficits, but the new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans would result in rising deficits as far as the eye can see. According to CBPP's analysis, “the debt would continue to grow in relation to the size of the economy for at least 40 more years — reaching over 175 percent of GDP by 2050. Even by 2080, the debt would still equal about 100 percent of GDP.” (That's about where it stands today.) Ryan (who thinks Ayn Rand “makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism) admits his proposal is less a budget than it is an ideological “cause.”

It would be a painful cause to advance. Economist Ethan Pollack estimates that the Medicaid provision alone – just one small part of this radical restructuring of the social contract – would cost the American economy 2.1 million jobs over the next five years, the vast majority of which would be shed by the private sector.

Last fall, the Democrats attempted to tie Ryan's proposal to the GOP caucus, but Republicans distanced themselves from Ryan's “roadmap.” “It's his,” then minority-leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters during the campaign. “I know the Democrats are trying to say that it's the Republican leadership ['s plan], but they know that's not the case.”

But they certainly own Ryan's “roadmap to poverty” now, prompting head-scratching from political observers. Ezra Klein, noting that in the last election, “seniors turned out in big numbers, and Republicans carried voters over 65 by an astounding 21 points,” wondered whether the GOP can “take on Medicare and survive”? (The CBO says that by 2030, seniors would end up paying 70 percent of their health costs out of pocket under Ryan's plan, but that assumes insurers will cover them, which is anything but a given.) And Reuters' James Pethokoukis suggested that Ryan's plan may prove to be “a 73-page suicide note” for the party.