What is it about today’s Republicans and their inability to do basic arithmetic? Is that why they inevitably cause huge budget deficits, at the same time they tout their business skill and financial acumen? Paul Ryan is regularly termed a “policy wonk” or a “budget specialist” by the corporate media, yet his “budget plan” doesn’t pass the test for basic addition and subtraction. Remember now, this is the very budget every Republican congressman in Virginia voted for. It’s the one Romney has tied himself to. So, the inference can be drawn that they can’t do arithmetic, either.
Why am I harping on the arithmetic part of Paul Ryan’s plan to Ayn-Randize our government? One simple reason. The numbers don’t add up. The key number is 3.75% of America’s GDP (gross domestic product). That is what Ryan’s bogus budget says will be the amount the federal government will spend by 2050 on everything other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. (Don’t forget that he assumes that Medicaid has become a block grant to the states, no matter how many sick poor people are in that state, making waiting lists for basic care inevitable. As for Medicare, seniors by then will get a voucher with a limit set by the government to test their luck in the private insurance market, the most expensive insurance one can get. Ryan simply ignores any problems with Social Security.)
The arithmetic boondoggle? Well, Ryan also says that defense in 2050 will consume 4% of GDP. Uh, the last time I took second grade math, 4 was bigger than 3.75. Those figures mean that the government can’t do anything else besides defense. Another glaring arithmetic problem lies in the fact that Ryan wants huge tax cuts for the mega wealthy and insists that tax revenues not be higher that 19% of GDP. That part means working class and middle class families pay more in taxes at the same time as Romney, Ryan and friends get huge tax cuts.
These discrepancies has been validated by the Congressional Budget Office, which said, “Spending for defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of GDP in any year since World War II.” Ryan seeks a higher level of defense spending, increasing defense funding by $228 billion over the next ten years, so the rest of government would largely have to disappear.
What’s the rest of government that would disappear? Things like veterans’ programs, medical research, scientific research, highways and infrastructure, education spending, Pell grants, all programs for low-income individuals other than Medicaid, national parks, border patrols, protection of food safety and water safety, federal law enforcement, airport construction, air traffic controllers, regulation of business, etc.
How long will we have to wait before the so-called reporters in the corporate media bother to do the basic math that proves that Paul Ryan is a fraud? Don’t hold your breath. He’s a nice enough fellow, evidently led far astray by the philosophy of a bitter, anti-communist atheist, Ayn Rand, and a great football player but a less-than-mediocre congressman, Jack Kemp, not to mention all those supply-side “economists” spreading their bogus theories to misled people.
The last thing this country need now Is Romney-Ryan in the White House. And, we don’t need the Virginia GOP congressmen who drank Ryan’s Randian Koolaid in the federal legislature. In every congressional district, we need to spread the word about just what the GOP representatives voted for.
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