Paul Ryan Hates the Unemployed and Poor

"We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency." - Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan's new plan, The Path to Prosperity - The Sequel, gives those making over $1 million per year an average tax cut of at least $150,000 and preserves tax breaks for oil and gas companies and hedge fund managers. These tax breaks are then paid for by ending Medicare as we know it.

Paul Ryan's plan would nullify the issue of the expiring Bush tax cuts. Robert Reich writes: "Republican Social Darwinists are determined that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 be made permanent. Those cuts saved the richest 1 percent of taxpayers (roughly 1.4 million people) more money on their taxes last year than the rest of America's 141 million taxpayers received in total income."

Ryan's grand plan also seeks to replace the $500 billion in triggered cuts to the defense department by substituting measures that would decrease spending on food stamps, federal worker benefits and health care programs, among other items.

Ryan's blueprint says, "The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reforms cut welfare caseloads in half as poverty rates declined. In stark contrast to critics' fears, child-poverty rates fell 1 percent per year in the five years following the passage of TANF in 1996."

But since then, the child poverty rate has gone back up, even as TANF caseloads have continued to decline. The poverty rate for Americans under 18 was 20.5 percent in 1996. Now it's 22 percent. "The success of welfare reform is way oversold because it's based on early years when the economy was booming," says LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ryan's plan would turn the funding for federal programs like food stamps and housing assistance into block grants -- a fixed yearly allotment granting states greater spending flexibility. States would then set work requirements and time limits for the benefits.

Is he kidding? Work requirements and time limits for Americans who have already been unemployed for over 2 or 3 years, because no one will even hire them to shine Paul Ryan's shoes?

Paul Ryan says, "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives."

What? But what if able-bodied people can't find work? Or if they do, are only offered part-time jobs that don't pay a living wage? Let's see if Mister Ryan can live on a minimum wage. Here's a map the United States at Jared Bernstein's blog that shows how many hours one must work in each State just to pay their rent (and that doesn't even include food.)

And what's all this nonsense about "hammocks"? Many people are living in other people's basements and garages, inside their cars, in homeless shelters, or on the streets. They're not on vacation Mister Ryan, they're just trying to survive!

Robert Reich agrees: "I have news for Paul Ryan. Almost 23 million able-bodied people still can't find work. They're not being lulled into dependency. They and their families could use some help. Even if the economy continues to generate new jobs at the rate it's been going the last three months, we wouldn't see normal rates of unemployment until 2017."

New research by professors Emmanual Saez and Thomas Pikkety show that the average adjusted gross income of the bottom 90 percent was $29,840. Forty-six million people live below the poverty line. Almost half of all working Americans earn less than $27,000 a year (The poverty line for a family of four is $22,314)

Paul Ryan is paid $174,000 a year, a pension, and healthcare by the taxpayers for his "big government" part-time job.

Paul Ryan's plan includes block-grants for giving states the "flexibility" to use those funds for other things (like more tax breaks for businesses) rather than helping the poor.

Lowering spending on food stamps is a top target of Ryan's plan, which notes their cost has increased from $18 billion in 2001 to $80 billion today - - because since after the Great Recession that the Republicans caused, and the subsequent massive layoffs, now is when these people need these benefits the most.

About 1.8 million women, infants, and children who rely on the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program would be off this program in 2014. Similarly, by 2014 more than 400,000 low-income families would lose critically important housing vouchers.

There will also be cuts to spending on Pell Grants - - 9.6 million low-income students would see their Pell Grants fall by more than $1,000 in 2014 - - and, over the next decade, over one million students would lose support altogether.

Keep in mind: Paul Ryan's plan reduces the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25 percent. Cuts of this magnitude give Americans who make more than $1 million a year an average tax cut of at least $150,000 a year. The money would come out of programs for the elderly, lower-middle families, and the poor.

Paul Ryan must hate the poor and unemployed.

* Ten questions for Paul Ryan and his supporters

My related blog posts:

• Paul Ryan's 'New and Improved' Path to Austerity
• Obama's 'Welfare State'
• The Republican's War on the Poor
• Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps
• Homelessness Higher and Rising
• Republicans Caused Mass Poverty
• Republicans Created Welfare, Not Democrats
• 1 in 200 Americans were in a Homeless Shelter
• Republican Lies & Hypocrisy about Entitlements

Paul Ryan's 'New and Improved' Path to Austerity

The GOP's latest tax plan is very simple: tax the wealthy and corporations less. Paul Ryan calls it "a new Path to Prosperity budget" (Path to Austerity Part II - The Sequel). The Republicans say Obama wants the U.S. to be more like Europe, but in reality, it's the GOP that's been trying to push average Americans into austerity, forcing us to be more like the average European in countries like Greece.

So what's new about the GOP tax plan? Basically nothing. It's the "same old, same old" - - cut government services for the middle-class and poor, and give more tax breaks to profitable multi-national corporations and the top 1%.

All the Republican presidential tax proposals are basically the same: shrink government down to the size where they can drown it in the bathtub. Cut, cut, cut spending and cut, cut, cut taxes. The very wealthy don't need unemployment benefits, food stamps, Medicare, and Social Security (and so therefore, don't want to contribute); but almost everyone else does need these programs at sometime in their life.

Even Paul Ryan used Social Security death benefits to finance his college tuition, but now he says YOU have to do without.

The GOP believes (or tells you they believe) that by cutting taxes and cutting spending, we will somehow magically lower the deficit. Didn't they say the same thing during George W. Bush's term in office? Then look what happened.

The "new and improved" proposal offered by House Republicans Paul Ryan and David Camp will introduce a 2013 budget that cuts tax rates and provides for just two individual brackets of 10% and 25% - - and eliminate most U.S. taxes on American corporations' earnings from overseas operations.

The typical GOP strategy has always been to throw a small bone at low income earners to save them a little, while at the same time saving the wealthy millions.

Mr. Ryan's budget also includes an "overhaul" on Medicare and a decision to set lower 2013 spending levels than those agreed to in the debt-limit deal in August.

"Republicans are on a maddening push once again to end Medicare and raise health-care costs for seniors, while giving more special tax breaks to big oil companies and millionaires," said Rep. Steve Israel (D., N.Y.)

In an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Ryan says, "Our generation's greatest domestic challenge: reforming and modernizing government to prevent an explosion of debt from crippling our nation and robbing our children of their future."

He also says "courageous Democrats have joined our efforts", but who are they?

The current tax system has six individual tax brackets, with a top marginal rate of 35%. The proposal to replace it with just two brackets, with rates of 10% and 25%, echoes proposals by some GOP presidential contenders.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum would reduce rates to 10% and 28%; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would cut current rates by one-fifth; and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul support some form of flat tax....all that benefit the wealthy most. Why not just lower taxes on low income earners?

The Ryan-Camp plan would scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT, which was designed to prevent high earners from using so many deductions that they end up paying negligible taxes. The AMT isn't indexed for inflation, so it has been affecting a growing number of middle-class taxpayers. In recent years, Congress has blocked the AMT from taking full effect.

The new budget would also lower the top corporate tax rate to 25% from 35% and plunge into the debate about how to tax companies' overseas operations. U.S. companies now pay the tax rate of the country where the outpost is located and then, if they bring those profits home, often pay some U.S. taxes as well. Under the Ryan-Camp proposal, companies essentially would pay just the tax rate of the country where the profits are earned.

Paul Ryan says the corporate tax rate of 35% "will soon be the highest rate in the developed world", but he always fails to mention that the Fortune 500 companies have been only paying an average "effective" rate of 18% to 24% for decades (Does not mentioning this make him "disingenuous"?)

Republicans say the current system unfairly taxes corporations twice, hurts their competitiveness and discourages them from reinvesting in the U.S. (I say, if they don't want to pay corporate taxes, then they could un-incorporate).

The budget plan doesn't specify a tax rate for foreign earnings brought back to the U.S., but some Republicans previously have suggested exempting 95% of future foreign earnings from U.S. corporate tax and imposing a 5.25% tax on existing overseas earnings. (Great! Send jobs overseas for cheap labor AND tax them less for doing this!)

Critics say such a move would prompt American firms to avoid taxes by moving operations overseas even faster than they already are, harming American workers and reducing investment in the U.S.

Paul Ryan, like all Republicans, represents the interests of big corporations (like his own family's), and has been pushing the agenda to lower corporate taxes for those very same corporations that bust unions to pay their workers poverty wages, rather than paying them living wages.

Jerry D. Bumpus Sr. was a member of the United Auto Workers union for four decades and earned $28 an hour at a General Motors car-parts plant before accepting a bonus and agreeing to retire at age 60 five years ago. Now he's one of several thousand people lining up to apply for jobs at a new Caterpillar plant whose jobs start at as low as $12 an (and there is no union representing the workers.)

Politicians are fighting harder than ever to attract employers with lower taxes, streamlined regulation and other incentives. Companies like Caterpillar have been eagerly exploiting both trends.

When Caterpillar announced the closure of their old plant in Canada to open the new plant in Indiana, Canadian workers were enraged. "I've been here 25 years and they wanted to offer us a bowl of rice to work, like we were workers in Asia," says Rafeek Khan, a 55-year-old machinist at the plant. A chain-link fence had been erected to keep the workers out.

Many new hires are willing to work for lower pay when jobs are scarce (like in this recession) and that helps keep a lid on wage costs. 52,000 factories have moved overseas for cheap labor under George W. Bush. It was either that or, companies concentrating many of their manufacturing investments in states where unions are weak and wages relatively low. Now the Republicans want to reward these same companies for their "patriotism"?

Last year Boeing opened a non-union plant in South Carolina, supplementing its unionized factories in the Seattle area. Starting pay for assembly workers at the South Carolina plant is $14.35 per hour, compared with $15 in Seattle. Union employees in Washington state tend to be much more experienced and average about $28 per hour.

Harley-Davidson told unions in York, Pa., Kansas City, Mo., and Milwaukee that it would move production elsewhere unless they accepted "more-flexible working arrangements", including greater use of temporary workers. The unions complied.

Dustin Pittsford, 24, was among the thousands who lined up at Caterpillar's recent job fair for potential employees. He is currently raising two children by working at a tire store for $8.25 per hour. The Caterpillar wages of $12 an hour would be "a step up for me", he says.

"Driving down wages doesn't do anybody any good," the mayor says. He was a union member as a firefighter and his father was a UAW member.

Caterpillar proposed to cut wages at the Canadian plant by about 50%. The union refused that offer, and at the end of 2011 Caterpillar said it would lock out the workers until they agreed to a new contract.

And Paul Ryan and the Republicans want these same corporations to pay less taxes, while cutting average benefits and wages for average working Americans. Are these companies now more powerful than countries?

Many congressional Democrats agree with Republicans in that the U.S. tax code needs to be rewritten. Both sides decry the thousands of tax breaks that have been written into the code, often at the behest of industries with lobbyists.

Corporate America exploits the tax code and worker's rights with a relentless regularity - and that's one reason why there is so much government regulation and complicated tax laws - - the CEOs hire an army of attorneys and tax accountants to circumvent existing laws, while exercising a minimum of corporate governance in their quest for profits at any cost. The latest case in point: the battle over outrageous CEO pay.

The biggest differences between the Democrats tax plan and the Republican's is, the Republicans just want to starve the government of tax revenues to force spending cuts in everything but defense spending. Paul Ryan says, "Our budget delivers real spending discipline. It does this not through indiscriminate cuts that endanger our military." Yes, the corporate defense industry is very big, wealthy, and powerful, and has operations in all 50 States. See my post: Defense Spending, Bogus Parts, Transnational Mergers, Outsourcing & Budget Cuts

Paul Ryan also misleads the American public in his recent op-ed piece by saying, "With regard to tax reform, the president's latest budget calls for taking more from American families and businesses by raising rates and adding complexity to the tax code—precisely at odds with the bipartisan consensus for tax reform." He fails to mention that Obama only wants to tax these "all-American and apple pie families" who earn over $1 million a year.

The Democrats, in contrast, only want to tax those that have already had a windfall in tax breaks over the past ten years, and just want to start taxing them more fairly now. Taxes on the rich are already historically low.

Where was Paul Ryan and the Republicans during the George W. Bush years when we had un-paid two wars, tax breaks for the rich, and an "explosion of debt that was crippling our nation and robbing our children of their future"?

Here's a video I made that was dedicated to Paul Ryan and his Republican friends in congress.

My other Paul Ryan posts:

• Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps
• Paul Ryan and GOP Promotes Class Envy
• Paul Ryan Town Hall - Jobless Constituents Sent to Jail
• Paul Ryan's Holy Bible

My other related posts:

• Inequality and the Billionaire's Club
• A Moment of Silence Please, so we May Mourn the Rich
• Subsidies for the Rich and Famous
• Historical Tax Rates on the Rich (1862 to 2011)
• The Second Gilded Age: History Repeats Itself
• Mellon: The Banker Who Rigged the U.S. Tax Code
• The GOP Tax Plan - Ignorance, Insanity, or Greed?
• We have a Revenue Problem, Not A Spending Problem
• 280 Corporations are "Too Big to Tax"
• Trickle-Down Economics: The Cruel 30-Year Hoax
• You Pay Hidden Entitlements for the Rich
• How Mitt Romney & the 1% Evades Taxes
• GOP Claims Tax Evasion as Excuse to Cut Taxes
• How CEOs are Rewarded for Fraud
• How the 1% bilks the 99%

Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps

The poor in America aren't waging class war on the rich, they're too busy just trying to survive.

Why aren't members of congress required to take a drug test? (Just like almost everybody else must do these days.) Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act and they make life-and-death decisions all the time....such as the funding for wars. Or in this case, the de-funding in class wars, such as cuts to unemployment benefits, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and food stamps.

Paul Ryan went to the conservative Heritage Foundation to give a speech and spent most of his time attacking Barack Obama for sowing the seeds of "class warfare." But over the last several months it's become increasing clear to almost everyone (even Republican voters) that it's really been Paul Ryan and the GOP who have waged a class war against the middle-class and poor (the 99%).

In a New York Times/CBS News poll, an astounding 69 percent of all Americans said Republican policies favor the rich (the top 1%).

A recent survey by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center showed Occupy Wall Street to be more popular now than the Tea Party (and that includes the likes of Paul Ryan).

Besides being an heir to the family construction business and part of the 1%, taxpayers paid Paul Ryan an annual salary of $174,000 year, provided for his government healthcare, and gave him a generous government pension. So who is it REALLY that's on the government dole?

And they don't work that hard either. The Republicans changed the congressional House schedule so they could take one week off for vacation for every two weeks they work in Washington. Their excuse was: "More days in session has always resulted in bigger, more intrusive government." (But it's really so they could spend more time taking care of their financial interests, not talking to their middle-class constituents back home).

The fat in Congress isn't the part of government that's "too big" for Paul Ryan and all the other fat-cat Republican politicians, it's other things that ordinary Americans are more concerned with, such as  Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. That's what Republicans think is "big government", not their own extraordinary salaries and perks.

But in regards to defense spending, oil subsidies, and tax breaks for the top one percent and large multi-national corporations, they are all acceptable expenditures for Republicans like Paul Ryan. But food stamps for the poor are not...they consider that "big government".

It's always "big government" when we need something, but not when they benefit from something -- they are just hypocritical pigs. When his father died Paul Ryan used his Social Security survivor benefits to pay for his education at Miami University in Ohio, where he completed a bachelor's degree in economics and political science in 1992.

His family wasn't indigent, but Paul Ryan wants to cut benefits for those who are.

Paul Ryan drinking a glass of $350-a-bottle wine, specifically Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru

In addition to releasing that radical budget to dismantled Medicare for the elderly and those with disabilities (The Path to Prosperity) while raising taxes on the middle class (while giving more tax breaks to the rich), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has also suggested a radical reworking of the food stamp program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP).

Under Paul Ryan's plan, it would simply block grants for SNAP to state governments, “SNAP would largely lose the ability to respond to rising needs, forcing states during economic downturns to cut benefits or create waiting lists for needy families.”

In order to build support for his dismantling of the food safety net, Paul Ryan has been spreading falsehoods regarding SNAP. Case in point, during a question and answer session hosted by the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, Ryan claimed that SNAP is “rife with fraud“:

"Help us figure out how to reform these programs so they can grow at more sustainable rates and so that they really work. Help us reduce the redundancy and the duplicativeness of programs. Help us figure out how to make sure that these things are actually getting the assistance to the people who really need them. Look at SNAP for example. You know we get all these reports. We get hearings and GAO and reports about how the SNAP program is rife with fraud, how it’s not getting the assistance to the people who need it, how there’s no incentive to – we’ve got a guy who won a lottery that’s on the program you know. Help us figure out how to reform these programs so that they can work better."

But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, SNAP errors are currently at an all-time low, with errors accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

During the recession, SNAP has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies. So in order to push his radical revamp of the program, Ryan is simply inventing reasons to attack its current structure, which is actually functioning quite well.

Now we have to wait and see what the un-Constitutional congressional super committee will do. Yesterday in the Senate, the poor got a temporary reprieve on a 60-39 roll call vote, seven Republicans joined Democrats in blocking a motion by Tea Party forces that threatened to pit food stamp benefits.

Half of congress are already millionaires, but now, according to Roll Call, members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total -- and nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest members of Congress.

Paul Ryan is a millionaire with a family business who enjoys $350-a-bottle wine on a $174,000 annual salary, but instead of paying for my food stamps, he wants even lower taxes for himself and his family business.

My prediction for November 2012

Barring any last minute Republican nominees and any major scandals by the Democrats, Mitt Romney will win the GOP nomination (although I would have preferred Jon Huntsman); but he will lose to Obama in the presidential debates and the election. The Democrats will retain the Senate, and win back the House.

But no matter what party wins, unemployment will remain about the same, and nothing will change for the 99%. Homelessness and poverty will continue to rise, the banks and big corporations will continue to earn profits, wages will remain stagnant, and the CEOs will still rake in multi-million-dollar salaries and bonuses.

The politicians will most likely cave in to the "job creator's" ploy and lower corporate taxes, but if corporations were already being taxed too much now, how could they have hoarded $2 trillion in off-shore bank accounts? Wouldn't more tax breaks just put more cash into those corporate off-shore banks? Wouldn't more tax cuts just go to give CEOs bigger bonuses? It's low wages, not high taxes, that induce corporations to outsource jobs.

As they say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

The only thing I can't predict for November 2012 is my own survival. People like me don't have any "certainty" in the marketplace.

Don't the poor and elderly in this country also have a Right to Life? Paul Ryan and the Republicans want to deny millions of people the basic necessity of life...food. "Class war" my ass! It sounds more like "mass extermination".