Remember all those economic charts Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan used to hold up on television proving that increasing federal deficits under Democrats would inexorably lead to the nation’s total financial collapse—with shell-shocked Americans digging out of the smoldering, economic wreckage? As House Budget Chairman, Ryan claimed the nation’s only hope for survival was draconian Republican House budgets beginning in 2010 making savage cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and every other government program benefiting ordinary Americans.
Paul Ryan was the economic equivalent of that unnamed American officer during the Vietnam War who infamously argued that a certain village had to be destroyed in order to save it. Ryan’s cruel proposals won him second spot on the 2012 Republican ticket and a promotion to Speaker of the House. That puts Ryan squarely in charge of passing Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts that will overwhelmingly go to Trump and his family and other millionaires, billionaires and their corporations. Ryan’s sudden embrace of deficit-exploding tax cuts exposes the biggest lie of his political career.
GOP Plan Will Raise Debt
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, first began pointing out in 2010 that Ryan’s mean-spirited budgets did little to eliminate U.S. debt. Ryan simply used exaggerated claims about deficit spending as an excuse to propose devastating cuts in government programs. Then, he urged turning those savings into (guess what?) massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. “Ryan is not, repeat not, a serious, honest man of principle,” Krugman has written. “He has been an obvious fraud all along, at least to anyone who can do budget arithmetic.”
Ryan’s support for the largest increase in the national debt in U.S. history now makes it clear all his apocalyptic fear mongering over deficits was a total sham. A year after his election, Trump has failed to pass any major legislation, which he promised voters would somehow magically become a reality on “day one” of his presidency. But that hasn’t stopped the self-aggrandizing Trump from claiming any legislation he ever does pass—if he ever manages to pass any—will be the biggest, greatest and most beautiful legislation ever passed.
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In order to pass the biggest, greatest, most beautiful tax cuts for himself, his family and their wealthy friends, Trump isn’t going to limit himself to only what can be cut out of government spending for other people. The Trump tax cuts also will add a record $1.5 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade. Confronted with the most monstrous explosion of budget deficits in history, Ryan—the relentless foe of immoral, America-destroying federal deficits he claimed would bankrupt our children and leave a once great nation in ruins—obediently promises to get it done, boss.
Ryan’s job and political career may depend upon it. With Republicans in complete control of the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, passing tax cuts should be a cinch. Republicans always fool hard-working Americans into believing tax cuts will be showered upon them and their families; in truth, ordinary Americans barely receive a light drizzle.
Windfalls for the Wealthy
All the real money from the Trump tax cuts, according to an early analysis by the Tax Policy Center, is reserved for the wealthy with some windfalls exceeding $720,000 a year. About a third of middle-class taxpayers could actually get tax increases. Most will initially receive a few hundred dollars for a few years before their taxes start going up again in 2023.
Several special whopping tax cuts apply only to the wealthy, which, of course, means the Trump family (he tries to hide this by refusing to release his tax forms). Eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax for the wealthy would have cut Trump’s 2005 taxes, which were leaked publicly, by 85%. Eliminating estate taxes for millionaires would save Trump’s family an estimated $1.4 billion. A special lower rate for so-called “pass through” businesses would apply to most Trump businesses.
That makes even crueler some of the tax deductions Republicans eliminate for people in dire straits to free up all that money for the ultra-wealthy. That includes people with catastrophic illnesses and special needs children who have medical expenses greater than 10% of their income and those with enormous losses from recent hurricanes, floods and natural disasters not covered by insurance.
Ryan has abandoned the biggest lie of his career about the urgency of reducing the nightmare of U.S. budget deficits, but his new lies about Republican tax cuts benefitting the middle class will create a brand-new American nightmare. Compound interest on that enormous $1.5 trillion addition to the national debt will require even greater tax increases and government spending cuts in the future. That means the next huge boot to fall will be draconian cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and every other government program.
Paul Ryan’s lies may change, but his solutions—and the enormous tax cuts for the wealthy—are always the same.
