Inkwell Institute

Subject:  Budgetary Process

Now that we have had the health care ruling and the Papers please ruling and the defeat of states rights….we can now move on to a much talked about issue….The Budget!  That is if the “do nothings” reps ever stop kneeling in front of their owners with their mouths open.  (did you know that the prostitutes (Congress) in DC work on average of 3 days a week every other week?)

Soon, very soon, the debate on the budget will heat up….my guess is about the time of the political conventions….it will make good fodder for the two campaigns…..Paul Ryan has offered his vision for a budget…..the Dems have offered what they think a budget should look like….there has been a back and forth already some of it polite discourse and some of it outright anger and insulting….with all that we still are NO closer than we were last year at this time…….

But do you, personally, know what is in both budget proposals?  I have written separate posts on the different budgets and that does not really help my reader decide what is good and what is bad…..I will attempt to rectify my oversight.  I will do something that few have done……most people have picked a side of the budget debate already…….but with that said….do they really have a side or just identity politics at work……….

The Economic Policy Institute was offered up a comparison…….

The budget proposed by Rep. Ryan (R-Wis.) prioritizes vastly increasing the last decade’s already-large tax cuts for the highest-income households, expanding the size of the defense budget, privatizing Medicare, defunding Medicaid, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and shrinking other functions of government (such as funding for education, research, and income support). These budgetary priorities not only fail to address our major economic challenges, but would exacerbate them. Substantial near-term spending cuts would slow recovery and increase joblessness. Deep domestic spending cuts would starve public investments needed as the foundation for growth, and such cuts would impede economic opportunity and mobility. Greatly diminishing the public provision of health insurance would reduce cost controls and health insurance coverage, raising overall national health expenditure while reducing economic security for the disabled, elderly, and disadvantaged children. Trillions of dollars in additional unfinanced tax cuts targeted to upper-income households would swell budget deficits and widen income inequality.

The Budget for All, in contrast, starts with an evidence-based diagnosis of the problems facing the economy and proposes policy prescriptions clearly demonstrated by the weight of economic evidence to address these challenges. Significantly increasing near-term public investment and targeted job creation measures (thereby increasing near-term budget deficits) would meaningfully accelerate growth and reduce joblessness caused by insufficient economy-wide spending. Sustained public investments would help ensure acceptable productivity growth going forward (as productivity growth provides the potential for broad-based increases in living standards), and a more progressive tax code and stronger safety net would help reverse the pronounced trend of productivity growth disproportionately benefiting only a small slice of American households. Protecting health care reform and using government bargaining power to negotiate lower prices would slow the rise of per capita health care costs and ensure health and retirement security in the face of an unraveling employer-based provision system. And a combination of health reforms, revenue increases, and realigned discretionary spending would stabilize the long-run fiscal outlook without jeopardizing economic recovery.

I found the Ryan budget lacking in specifics……..his budget will need trillions in income to succeed….yet the only revenue is a vague reference to expanding the tax base….but do we do that when the wealthiest gets bigger tax cuts?

There you have a brief synopsis of the two budgets….you compare and you decide which is a serious proposal and which is not…..either way it is a starting point for compromise…..the problem is compromise is dead in American politics…..can it be revived?  (That was a rhetorical question for we all know the answer)…….