The selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to round out the Republican presidential ticket only reconfirms what the Romney campaign represents. Romney-Ryan aims to bury once and for all the remaining elements of the social welfare state established during the 1930s and 1960s. Dubbed “America’s Comeback Team,” by Republican spin doctors, the team’s game plan is to destroy Medicare, Social Security, environmental regulation, workers’ rights and virtually anything else one could think of that even slightly benefits working-class people in the United States.
The selection of Ryan serves the role of further confirming this orientation for the conservative “grassroots” of the Republican Party who view Romney with extreme suspicion. In the wake of the 2010 Tea Party election sweep, Ryan emerged as the “intellectual voice” of the newly ascendant far-right. His savage tax-cutting and “reform” proposals were the most lucidly presented policy vision of any congressional legislator claiming to come from the Tea Party movement. However Ryan’s votes in favor of both the “Troubled Assets Relief Program” and auto-industry bailout are clear signs of his ultimate fealty to the needs of America’s capitalist class over abstract free-market principles.
While on many issues other than Medicare, Ryan has been somewhat vague in the policies he advocates, any examination of his proposals as chair of the House Budget Committee reveal a truly draconian austerity agenda.
What does Ryan budget propose to cut?
Rep. Ryan has gone to great lengths to avoid specifying many of the cuts he would make to social programs in the United States. When confronted with accusations that he plans to cut any particular program, he routinely responds by saying he has no intentions of cutting that specific program, a very handy way of avoiding any discussion of the millions of lives his proposal would ruin.
While this does create some level of ambiguity, there are a few things from which Ryan cannot hide.
In his budget proposal, Ryan proposes a 17 percent cut, $133.5 billion, from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) over the next 10 years. Ryan, of course, does not specify how exactly he would make these cuts. However, given that 90 percent of SNAP funds go towards food assistance, this would have to take place by some combination of reducing eligibility and decreasing benefits. This could lead to up to 8 million people being cut from the program, or to benefits dropping below the recommended minimum amount of food as determined by the USDA.
This is consistent with the recent campaign by Republicans to portray food stamps as a needlessly bloated program. The real facts are that 85 percent of SNAP recipients are below the poverty line, with a full 43 percent living below half of the poverty line. Households below the poverty line receive 93 percent of SNAP benefits. In 2010 alone, 4 million people were lifted above the poverty line because of SNAP.
Whatever sorts of dodges Ryan uses with the media, it is entirely clear that his proposed cuts to SNAP would result in increased hunger among working people.
If sending poor children to bed hungry is not enough, under Ryan’s budget plan over 1 million students would see cuts in Pell Grants, student loan rates would double, and students would be required to begin paying interest on student loans while still in school. By recent counts, 74 percent of Pell Grant recipients had family incomes of no more than $30,000. The cuts proposed by Ryan make clear that his vision for access to higher education includes significantly restricted access for poor and working families.
Medicare and Medicaid under attack
Grabbing the most headlines in the capitalist press have been Ryan’s plans for Medicare, and to a lesser extent Medicaid. Ryan’s proposed plan, of which Romney approves, would turn the guaranteed benefit structure of Medicare into a voucher system, as well as raise the age of eligibility.
The basic plan would have retirees, starting in 2023, receive a “premium support voucher” with which they could buy a private plan or traditional Medicare coverage. The value of the voucher would be the same as the cost of the second-lowest private plan in a person’s particular area, or Medicare, whichever is lower.
However, given that the amount Medicare can spend would be capped under Ryan’s proposal, over time the vouchers would actually purchase less, given that health care costs will almost inevitably grow faster than the amount of allowed spending. Only 15 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have incomes over $50,000. This means that the increased costs incurred by retirees for adequate health care would fall mostly on those with the least resources.
On top of this, Ryan has proposed $1.4 trillion in cuts to Medicaid in the next decade. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this would mean that the Ryan plan would “probably require states to reduce payments to providers, curtail eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries, or pay more themselves than would be the case under current law.”
Ryan proposes doing all this while also cutting taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The most recent House budget passed under his stewardship proposes reducing the top tax rate for both individuals and corporations to 25 percent and taxing investment income at 15 percent. So while relentlessly attacking services for the poor, Ryan also wants to let the super-rich get even wealthier.
A grim vision of the future
All of the above is the essence of Ryan’s vision for the future of this country, a place where the poor are thrown to the whims of the labor market, where decent health care is unattainable, where college becomes the preserve of the rich. By picking Ryan as his vice-presidential candidate, Romney has signaled that his campaign is indeed an all-out assault on the programs and benefits won through years of struggle by working people for better living standards.
Ryan’s horrendous proposed budget does not mean the Democrats’ budget is significantly better, or that the Democrats have any intention of challenging Wall Street’s bogus “common sense” about the need to restructure “entitlements.” An Aug. 17 article in The New York Times writes of President Obama, “He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.”
The Party for Socialism and Liberation Lindsay/Osorio presidential campaign presents an entirely different vision for working people, one where the wealth of society, which we create, is under our control and used to meet our needs—not siphoned off into the pockets of the super-rich.
