What is it with this guy?
So here we see Paul Ryan with a NEW AND IMPROVED budget plan that’s going to cut the deficit, spark prosperity, make you younger and thinner too. But only because you’ll have less money to buy food…
U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan Tuesday unveiled a revised tax-and-spending proposal that he said would eliminate the deficit within a decade by cutting $4.6 trillion out of a vast swath of federal expenditures.
The budget for fiscal year 2014 would cut Medicaid, food stamps, Pell college tuition grants and scores of other programs while sparing the Defense Department and reducing individual and corporate income tax rates.
Time out on the field.
First off, ignore the fact that the American public voted against this in November.
Does Ryan, do Republicans actually believe that any “serious,” legitimate plan to cut the deficit can “spare the Defense Department?”
On what planet are they living (a scary scary scary one where terrorists are hiding under the bed, I suppose).
I came across this one earlier today:
The Pentagon needs to budget $12.6 billion each year through 2037 to finish developing and paying for all the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighters it plans to buy, according to a report released by a congressional watchdog agency on Monday.
This amounts to $2 billion per year more the Pentagon would need for this program than the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had projected in a draft report obtained and published by Reuters on Saturday. …
<snip>
The F-35 is an advanced fighter meant to serve the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines for decades to come. The program, which has seen costs rise 70 percent from initial projections and numerous technical complications, is facing a critical phase in which any new setbacks or reductions in orders from the U.S. military and its allies would further boost the cost per plane.
The program is slated to cost nearly $400 billion overall, plus over $1 trillion for so-called “sustainment” costs that cover operating and maintaining the warplanes over an estimated 30-year service life.
No problemo, we got plenty of money for this. Don’t have to cut one thin dime, according to Paul Ryan’s logic.
But food stamps? The Medicaid that pays for Grandma’s nursing home stay? Break out the chainsaw.
Until Ryan and his ideological fellow travelers can find the common sense and moral strength to actually include military cuts along with their preferred cuts in social spending, they can expect their agenda to go exactly –nowhere–. Sensible people are willing to compromise on this issue. Once again – with this proposal – Ryan proves how nonsensical he really is.
