Much has been made of the fact that modern conservatism seems to have run out of ideas. Aside from “tax cuts will solve every problem” and “anything Obama does is bad”, there is not much of substance to conservative politics these days. (No. The lunatic ravings of tea partiers do not count as ideas let alone ideas of substance).
So Washington conservatives have been full of praise for Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan who has stepped up to the plate with a comprehensive budget plan based on conservative principles and designed to eliminate the deficit.
Of course, as expected from a conservative, the plan calls not only for substantial cuts in Pell Grants, support for schools, law enforcement, job training, health research, and food stamps, but draconian cuts in social security and Medicare. In fact, social security and Medicare would be effectively eliminated by his plan.
And also, as expected, Ryan’s plan calls for significant tax cuts for the wealthy. According to Citizens for Tax Justice the richest citizens would see their tax bills go down by an average of over $200,000 while those with incomes under $100,000 would see their taxes go up by about $2,000 per year.
Most taxpayers will pay much more and receive much less.
One would think that with all that sacrifice by ordinary Americans, we might really see a dent in the deficit. But if you thought that you would be wrong.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has an analysis of the plan. They conclude:
As a result of its costly new tax cuts for the wealthy, the Ryan plan would allow the federal debt to continue rising in relation to the size of the economy for at least four decades. Even in CBO’s analysis of the Ryan plan, which assumed — as Ryan’s staff specified but the Tax Policy Center has found to be incorrect — that revenues would not fall below their projected levels under current tax policies until after 2030, the federal debt would grow as a share of GDP until 2043, and the budget would not reach balance until 2063. Under the much more realistic revenue estimates that the Tax Policy Center has prepared, the budgetary outlook under the Ryan plan would be substantially worse.
Using TPC’s new revenue estimates, we estimate that the budget deficit under the Ryan plan would reach about 7 percent of GDP and the debt would grow to 90 percent of GDP by 2020. TPC estimates that revenues under the Ryan plan would average 16.3 percent of GDP over the period from 2011 through 2020. […]
Extrapolating TPC’s revenue estimates beyond 2020 shows that the Ryan plan would fail to stem the rising tide of debt for years to come. [5] The debt would continue to grow in relation to the size of the economy for at least 40 more years — reaching over 175 percent of GDP by 2050. (See Figure 1.) Even by 2080, the debt would still equal about 100 percent of GDP.
Keep in mind that if the Republicans win back Congress, Ryan will be in charge of budget policy.
Everyone would be better off if conservatives went back to having no ideas again.
