To many GOPers, Paul Ryan is a kind of mantra, whether what he says adds up or doesn’t. It increasingly is clear his budget doesn’t add up:
House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) fiscal plan promises to balance the federal budget in 10 years, make major cuts in income tax rates for both individuals and corporations, and raise the same amount of revenue as current law. If House Republicans want to do all three, they will have to eliminate trillions of dollars in popular tax preferences.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that cutting individual rates to 10 percent and 25 percent, repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax and the tax increases included in the Affordable Care Act, and cutting the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent would add $5.7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Thus, if House Republicans want to cut these taxes and still collect the revenues they promise, they’d have to raise other taxes by $5.7 trillion.
But, hey, if Rush Limbaugh, and Eric Cantor, and Fox & Friends, and Sean Hannity says it adds up and is good, then what do these facts matter? What matters these days is the political mantra: a policy can be advocated over and over because it’s what they party advocates. MORE:
The tax cuts described in Ryan’s budget would generate a huge windfall for high-income taxpayers. On average, households would get a cut of $3,000. But those in the top 0.1 percent of income, who make $3.3 million or more, would get a whopping $1.2 million on average–a 20 percent increase in their after-tax income.
By contrast, middle-income households would get an average tax cut of about $900. Those in the bottom 20 percent (who make $22,000 or less) would get $40 and one-third of them would get no tax cut at all.
AND:
Some important caveats here: TPC did not estimate the revenue effects of a Ryan tax proposal since the budget does not include an actual plan. Rather, it modeled generic tax cuts that follow the outline of what his budget describes. And because his plan does not identify any tax increases, TPC modeled only the tax cuts.
The Ryan budget anticipates sufficient cuts in tax preferences so that a rewritten tax code raises the same amount of money as current law. But it leaves the details to the House Ways & Means Committee, which could make major changes in the budget panel’s plan.
TPC included in its revenue estimates two Obamacare tax increases on high-income households—the additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax and the new 3.9 percent tax on investment income. However, we excluded other provisions from the 2010 health law, including revenue the House budget would generate by eliminating insurance subsides or roughly the same amount Treasury would lose if other provisions of the 2010 health law are repealed.
Could Ways & Means find $5.7 trillion in tax preferences? It is hard to imagine.
Well, there are some who will imagine it — and accept the imagination as fact.
It happens all the time.
Remeber Karl Rove on election night?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.