Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The "Core" Of Ryan's Budget Plan

What is the 'Ryan plan'? Budget proposal back in spotlight with VP announcement
Published August 11, 2012
FoxNews.com

With Rep. Paul Ryan selected as Mitt Romney's running mate, voters will be hearing a lot about the so-called "Ryan" plan.

So what is it?

Though each party has strong feelings about what Ryan's controversial budget proposal entails, here are a few highlights. Just the facts:

The latest full-scale version of the plan, unveiled in March, vows to cut spending by $5 trillion over the next decade, compared against President Obama's plan.

The plan would, a decade from now, give seniors the option of taking a government payment to purchase health insurance. That payment could be used to buy a private insurance plan, or go toward the traditional Medicare plan. The plan calls for extra assistance to help low-income beneficiaries and those with "greater health risks."

The plan would overhaul Medicaid by turning it into a block grant system for states.

The plan would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It would implement two individual income tax brackets -- 10 percent and 25 percent.

The plan would head off the scheduled automatic defense cuts, first by diverting the planned $55 million defense cut in 2013 by implementing those cuts elsewhere.

The plan vows to bring the size of government to 20 percent of GDP by 2015

I know GREED is no VIRTUE! Look up the def. for virtue.

Ryan's budget plan doesn't mean chit. As VP, assuming Romney can pull it off, which is a huge assumption, his boss will submit his budget to congress for funding, not Ryan.

Romney has stated from day one that he supports and wants the Ryan plan. Most Republicans do.

The point behind the OP is merely to get the facts out there and clear as there will be lie after lie by the opposition about the Ryan plan.

Most clearly seen by the recent ad showing grandma getting wheeled off of a cliff.

for you commies, a loophole is anything that the government doesn't steal

you guys just hate people who make more money than you do, and want the government to steal it from them to even it up, and compensate for your inadequacies. it won't help....and the money won't ever make it down to you anyway.

Looking at 2008 IRS report of income taxes:

The top 1% of individual tax payers earned roughly 20% of all reported AGI (adjusted gross income). Let�s break that down shall we? The implication is that if you are lucky enough to be in the top 1% of earners of taxable AGI, that means you should be able to afford to pay more taxes to help out the less fortunate right?

There�s one problem� when you take a number like that, you�re hiding behind a percentage.

The top 1% of tax payers is roughly 1.4 million people. To qualify for the �top 1%� group, you�d have to earn roughly $385,000 AGI annually.

What You Should Know is that the top 1% of income earners paid a total of 38% of all individual federal income tax revenue ($410,898,035,220.00 or $411 Billion of 1.1 Trillion collected in individual federal tax revenues for 2008).

Now if you take in the top 50% of income earners (which includes both the top 1%) They paid 97.3% of all individual federal income tax revenues. If you take out the 38% of all revenues from the top 1%, the remaining 49% of top 50% earners� pay 59% of all individual federal tax revenues. And who are these dastardly high earners of the �above average earners�? Why they�re the folks that earn somewhere between $384,000 and $33,000 (that�s not a typo, that�s $33,000). If you earn $33,000 you�re part of the �above average pay� crowd. Maybe we should be taxing you more too right? And what of that bottom 50% that pays only 2.7% of all individual AGI tax revenues? They(about 70 million) contribute to 12.75% of all reported taxable AGI (which is $720Billion of the 5+ Trillion of taxable AGI in 2008)

So� say we ignore the Laffer Curve all together and decide that we should tax the top 1%� at 100% of earned of AGI (adjustable gross income). That would take us (based on 2008 revenues reported) to a total of federal income tax revenues to roughly a WHOPPING $1.85 Trillion. (The hell you say? We gain only a total of $750 Billion? Yeah, that�s what I�m saying).

So here are the real numbers: 20% of all individual taxable income is $1,130,463,019,000.00 according to the 2008 numbers IRS reported income. That�s a large number so I�ll shorten it for you� that�s $1.1 Trillion. Another way to look at it is there is roughly $5+ Trillion in total reported individual adjusted gross income of all individual tax payers, all tax brackets of the which $5+ Trillion is taxable, 20% of that ($1.1 Trillion) is earned by individuals in the top 1%.

Here�s the problem with our hypothetical situation of taxing the top 1% at 100% of total Adjusted Gross Income, we will barely cover our annual spending deficit that bounces between $1.3 to $1.5 Trillion.

Now if we get back to reality and understand the simple concept behind the Laffer Curve� I ask are you willing to see what happens when the top 1% of earners pay 100% of adjusted gross income�?

If so� maybe I should restate the gain of doing such an inane action: That $750 Billion that we would �potentially� gain� will go to paying roughly .051% of the principal of our total debt $14 Trillion (supposing we�d actually attempt to pay down the debt)� But rather� what would likely happen is the politicians would see this new $750 Billion in revenue as an opportunity to �spread the wealth�. They�d trumpet long and loud about a �budget surplus�.

You see� there�s but one way to reduce our debt� which is to do each of the following: cut entitlement spending, cap non-discretionary spending, and increase revenues.

In order to cap deficit spending its going to require some honest folks to pull up their adult pants, and cut entitlement programs that will force people to stop relying on the government when its not necessary {and that doesn�t include social security or medicare}.

In addition� to grow revenues, you should attempt to grow GDP, not bleed a dry turnip (as suggested above by raising the taxes on the rich). To do so, We�ll need some attractive business incentives to do more business in the United States, including reducing tax burdens on corporations and the top 1%. Also enacting policies that reduce the cost to do business in America.

Now I know its not the popular thing to do� well at least not with President Obama, because he�d like to point out that CEO�s with lots of money (presumably members of the top 1%) like to fly around in their private jet planes, and therefore should be able to afford more taxes. May I ask you Mr. President, how many golf games have you played during your administration, and how many of those games required you to fly out of Washington D.C. to the location?

Now if you want to play class warfare with the top 1% of earners� be my guest� but let me just say, I think its really a lame attempt at envy� or a calculated political lie meant to create division among the people, and to galvanize political support.

{Begin sarcasm}Dang those millionaires� how dare they earn so much, they don�t earn enough for us to pay our debts, or even our deficits� but DAMN THEM TO HELL for not giving away all of their income to poor people!!!{End Sarcasm}

Invective is lame� class warfare is lame� and being asinine about facts is lame. However, being a divisive, arrogant, hypocritical President� that�s just reckless self promotion.

Robert Reich and Paul Krugman are preeminent mainstream-media mouthpieces of the redistributionist welfare state. They constantly disseminate the myths that the rich don�t pay their fair share of taxes, and Congress is about to �slash taxes on the very rich�.

Yet they never attack the real source of America�s problems, crony capitalism, the economic foundation of the welfare state in which rich and poor alike are partners in crime with the government to rip off their fellow Americans. Reich and Krugman also propagate the myth that America�s deficit and economic problems could be eliminated simply by raising taxes on �the rich� and spending the new revenue on bigger government.

First, no one (unfortunately) is suggesting �slashing� tax rates for anyone. The question on the table for Congress to consider is whether it will dramatically increase tax rates next year�tax rates that have been on the books for almost a decade now�by permitting automatically scheduled rate hikes to take effect. Unless Congress acts to override this trigger, it willfully will be allowing the largest tax increase in history to go into effect. If Congress acts to maintain current tax rates, it won�t be cutting taxes by a dollar; it will simply be preserving the status quo and preventing a huge tax increase from occurring.

Interestingly, the Reich-Krugman logic on taxes doesn�t seem to apply in Washington on the spending side. The minute the Super Committee failed to come up with the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction measures required by the debt deal passed earlier this year, Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle began talking about switching off and rejiggering the $1.2 trillion in automatic sequester cuts that were triggered by the Super Committee�s failure to complete its task in order to avoid automatic spending cuts they don�t like. Yet, no one in Washington is using Reich-Krugman logic to bewail a �spending increase� produced by switching off or reconfiguring the sequester.

Krugman and Reich similarly torture the English language and distort tax statistics to promote the double-barrel fallacy that we both can solve the deficit problem and increase economic growth by raising taxes on the top one percent of income earners and spending the money on bigger government. Reich puts it this way:

�Put more money into the pockets of average Americans [by] extending unemployment benefits. Don�t stop there. Create a WPA to get the long-term unemployed back to work. And a Civilian Conservation Corp to create jobs for young people. Hire teachers for classrooms now overcrowded, and pay them enough to attract people who are talented as well as dedicated. Rebuild our pot-holed highways. Create a world-class infrastructure. Pay for this by hiking taxes on millionaires.�

Krugman and Reich also ridicule dynamic revenue estimation, which is based on empirical research demonstrating that lower marginal tax rates increase economic growth and in turn produce more revenues over the long run. The professors insist on pretending that people and businesses placidly pay higher tax rates without reducing work effort, saving, investing and entrepreneurial risk taking.

Krugman starts from the premise that, �The top 0.1 percent of taxpayers � roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million � had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars.� Without ever so much as a nod toward evidence or logical rigor, he jumps to the conclusion: �That�s a lot of money, and it wouldn�t be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.�

Oh really? Well, let�s see.

Federal income tax data from 2010 reveals that if the government had confiscated all the remaining income ($1.293 trillion) of the top one percent on top of their 2010 tax payments, it still would not have been enough to eliminate the deficit ($1.294 trillion). And, how much of those people�s income would exist to be confiscated in year two? The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), which insists on statically scoring such tax increases, may conclude the top one percent would sit still and allow their income to be confiscated repeatedly into the future, but not many people with any common sense would agree.

The absolute absurdity of static revenue analysis was best illustrated in 1988 when former Senator Robert Packwood (R-OR), then ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, requested the JCT to estimate what would happen if the federal government levied a 100 percent tax on all income over $200,000 annually. The JCT revenue estimators cranked up their static-revenue-estimating machine and concluded that such a confiscatory tax would raise $104 billion the first year, $204 billion the second year, $232 billion the third year, and $263 billion and $299 billion in the fourth and fifth years, respectively. Senator Packwood pointed out the irrationality of the JCT�s assumptions when he observed that its calculation �assumes people will work if they have to pay all their money to the Government. They will work forever and pay all of the money to the Government when clearly anyone in their right mind will not.�

OK, so let�s loosen the absurd assumption. What about doubling the effective (average) tax rate of the top one percent, i.e., raising their overall tax rate to 47 percent? That would raise about $392 billion, leaving a deficit of $900 billion. Not so easy, it turns out, to cut the deficit and spend more money by raising taxes on the one percent.

What about also doubling the tax rate on the top 10 percent, everyone earning more than $113,799? That would raise revenues by about an additional trillion dollars in the first year, leaving a deficit of about $300 billion. But notice, now we are talking about doubling the tax burden of everyone earning slightly more than $100,000, not exactly �the rich.�

That group, however, constitutes the investment core of the economy. Doubling their tax burden to increase government�s revenues by a trillion dollars would have siphoned almost 56 percent of the $1.7 trillion in gross domestic private investment (net of residential structures) that occurred last year. And that is supposed to be the road to economic recovery?

Does anyone seriously believe that kind of tax increase would not drastically lower economic growth in future years? Paul Krugman and Robert Reich must�that or they are deceiving their readers in pursuit of an agenda of envy and class warfare, not prosperity for all.

True, but it is a key element in human nature, even yours. Capitalism harnesses that.

Which ideology do you see as the best for a society?

The wealthy pay more taxes in one year than you have your entire adult years,wingnut. Does stupid actually hurt,Chuckles?

Really? How many of this nation's working class are employed by those 1%ers? While we're at it,can you tell me the name of any 1%ers who you personally know who haven't paid any taxes?

Where do you talking point kids get this crap you spew,aside from OWS cookouts?

Your blather of disinformation is wearing mighty thin.

Really? How many of this nation's working class are employed by those 1%ers? While we're at it,can you tell me the name of any 1%ers who you personally know who haven't paid any taxes?

Where do you talking point kids get this crap you spew,aside from OWS cookouts?