{"id":3206,"date":"2013-03-13T08:52:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T12:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=3206"},"modified":"2013-03-13T08:52:18","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T12:52:18","slug":"paul-ryans-budget-social-engineering-with-a-side-of-deficit-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2013\/03\/paul-ryans-budget-social-engineering-with-a-side-of-deficit-reduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Ryan\u2019s budget: Social engineering with a side of deficit reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"220px-Paul_Ryan_official_portrait\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is Paul Ryan\u2019s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act\u2019s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There\u2019s a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets \u2014 10 percent and 25 percent \u2014 and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.<\/p>\n

But the real point of Ryan\u2019s budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. It turns Medicare into a voucher program, turns Medicaid, food stamps, and a host of other programs for the poor into block grants managed by the states, shrinks the federal role on priorities like infrastructure and education to a tiny fraction of its current level, and envisions an entirely new tax code that will do much less to encourage home buying and health insurance.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan\u2019s real point throughout his career.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0<\/strong> Paul Ryan\u2019s budget: Social engineering with a side of deficit reduction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 Here is Paul Ryan\u2019s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act\u2019s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There\u2019s a vague individual…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,22],"tags":[24,250,126,143],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3207,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206\/revisions\/3207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}