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I also find it ironic and amusing that
Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82 Percent in Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan
How Ryan Makes Romney's Tax Problem Even Worse
Congressman Paul Ryan is best known as the author of a budget so radical The New York Times called it "the most extreme budget plan passed by a House of Congress in modern times." With Mitt Romney's support, Ryan would end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing -- all while cutting taxes for those at the very top.Obama campaign manager Jim Messina also put out a statement,
In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid.His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan gets booed by his own constituents
To Republicans, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is a superstar. To many in the media, he's a towering oracle of economic wisdom. To many in the Democratic Party, he's a political giant far too formidable even to question.
And so Ryan, a worshipper of Ayn Rand, gets away with spinning his right-wing extremism without much of a challenge, except from a few lone liberal voices like Jon Chait and Paul Krugman and from some of us outside the media/political establishment on the left of the political blogosphere.
He is widely touted as one of the true heroes of the moment, if not of our time, a courageous campaigner for fiscal responsibility, for balanced budgets and getting America's economic house in order at long last. And yet what he really is is a campaigner for the same old right-wing Republican economic policies, just with a pretty face and broad media appeal. His version of fiscal responsibility, a pretty standard conservative one, involves cutting programs for the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.
To their and their country's shame, most people don't much care about the poor, who barely have a voice in Washington. Most people also oppose cuts to major entitlement programs like Social Security, and so Ryan, like the rest of his party, doesn't want to go there. Nor, of course, does he support significant cuts to military spending, which would certainly help balance the budget. But the key is that Ryan wants to do everything he can to give the rich as much as possible at the expense of everyone else, not just the poor but everyone who isn't rich, including the middle class, or what's left of it. And in supporting tax cuts for the rich, Ryan exposes himself not as a crusader for fiscal responsibility but as your typical Republican, a party of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, a party that suckers the non-rich into voting for it by playing to deep-rooted fears about race or terrorism or whatever other Other it identifies as a vote-winner.
But you know what? Tax cuts for the rich aren't popular. At all. Republicans generally try to hide their support for such cuts, but they just can't do that anymore, or at least it's more difficult for them to do so, and more and more their real agenda, their plutocratic political agenda, is being exposed. People just need to pay attention.
Which is precisely what some of them are doing, including in Ryan's own district, where this week he was actually booed at a town hall for advocating tax cuts for the wealthy:
In a video posted by ThinkProgress, an attendee at the event this week told Ryan that he believes the rich should pay higher taxes to help close the deficit and strengthen Social Security.
"The middle class is disappearing right now," he said. "During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire?"
Ryan protested that "We do tax the top," before being drowned out by the audience's jeers.
Here's the clip. Hopefully it's just the start of what Ryan and the GOP deserve, which is the disapproval of voters and, come next November, votes for the other side.
(And instead of cowering in fear before Ryan and his media-enhanced stardom, Democrats should learn from this, as from all the polls showing public opposition to tax cuts for the rich, and counter the Republican agenda with a fair, sensible, and compassionate alternative that doesn't crush the poor, punish the middle class, and let the rich rape and pillage at will.)
I had to copy this comment from my FB. It's so spot on!
ReplyDeleteDona -
My favorite comparison for the US mess of Dubya is that of a house burnt to the ground. President Obama won the contractors bid, but upon getting it he was then denied any assistance by the subcontractors and refused supplies; this to insure that rebuilding would be long and difficult if not impossible. What really makes the right angry, I mean really angry, is that he was able to get some work done regardless of their wholehearted opposition.