Labor & Employment Law

Ryan?s Budget Plan: Millionaire Gain, Middle Class Pain

By Mike Hall

If new House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) gets everything on his budget-cutting wish list, it would be, says a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI):

a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to wealthy Americans and corporations and a wholesale dismantling of the social programs that all Americans rely on, including Medicare and Social Security.

Republican leaders are pushing to slash discretionary federal spending by 20 percent, including job-creating infrastructure programs, education, health, housing, workplace safety and other vital family support programs.

In ?Paul Ryan?s Plan for Millionaires’ Gain and Middle-Class Pain,? EPI Policy Analyst Andrew Fieldhouse says Ryan?s roadmap is:

riddled with policies that ignore the lessons learned from the Great Depression and underscored by the Great Recession.?Ryan?s plan still swears by the failed Bush-era economic policies of cutting taxes for the wealthy while neglecting the middle class and national investments.

It even proposes the partial privatization of Social Security, an increase in taxes on the middle class, the elimination of corporate taxes and the privatization of Medicare.

The plan would raise taxes on most Americans earning less than $200,000 while cutting millionaires? taxes in half. Fieldhouse says the wealthiest 0.1 percent of taxpayers?families making $3 million or more?would see an average yearly tax cut of $1.7 million.

In addition, the plan would replace the corporate income tax system with an 8.5 percent business consumption tax, which, Fieldhouse says ?would be passed on to consumers in the form of a value-added tax (that would fall most heavily on low- and middle-income people).?

Click here to read the full analysis.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 20, 2011 (boomark / email).