Paul Ryan: GOP Rhetoric vs. Reality

When the GOP picked Congressman Paul Ryan to give their official response to the State of the Union tonight, they hailed him as a visionary leader who makes tough budget decisions. They called him a fiscal conservative, the man who will lead us out of debt. They pushed the story of a rising star, one who has a bright future.

I don't think they thought through Ryan's ownership of his 2010 Budget "Roadmap." As Philly.com is explaining it:

– The Roadmap would lead to the wealthiest Americans paying a lower average tax rate than most Americans. Eliminating taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest, as the Roadmap proposes, would overwhelmingly help taxpayers at the top of the income distribution, who receive most or all of their income from capital. For example, Wall Street financiers could shelter all of their income as tax-free stock options or carried interest.

– Middle-class families earning between $50,000 and $75,000 a year would see their average tax rate jump to 19.1% (from 17.7%) under this plan—an increase of $900 on average [...]

– Millionaires would see their average tax rate drop to 12.8%, less than half of what they would pay relative to current policy

I don't know that this is the face the GOP wants to put on itself. Cutting taxes for the wealthy seems to run completely counter to balancing the budget. If that's not bad enough, PostPartisan takes it further in criticizing Ryan:

Ryan's "Roadmap" (which includes a number of ideas I support, by the way) purports to address the fiscal challenges of our aging population while restoring a culture of self-reliance rather than dependency on government. Yet while liberals have been busy blasting Ryan's proposed trims to Social Security and Medicare, the bigger budget outcomes Ryan proposes have been
virtually ignored. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Ryan's plan would result in annual deficits of between 3.5 and 4.5 percent of GDP between now and somewhere after 2040, with a balanced budget coming only around 2063. This would add at least $62 trillion
to the national debt over the period. (My estimate is conservative mostly because the independent Tax Policy Center says Ryan's tax reforms would produce far less revenue than Ryan required the CBO to assume.)

So basically, Ryan's actual plan cuts taxes for the millionaires, ends Social Security and Medicare, and runs a $62 trillion debt up. Fiscal Conservative? Not the way it looks.