The Republican budget would also force 4 million seniors in this country to pay $3,500 more on average for their prescription drugs by reopening the Medicare Part D doughnut hole. That goes into effect as soon as that bill would be passed, if it were to be passed.
Under the Republican budget, nearly 2 million children would lose their health insurance over the next 5 years by cuts to the Children's Health Insurance Program according, again, to the Congressional Budget Office. At a time when 50 million Americans have no health insurance, the Republican budget would cut Medicaid by over $770 billion, causing millions and millions of Americans to lose their health insurance, and it would cut nursing home assistance in half.
Right now, Medicaid pays the lion's share of nursing home care. If we make savage cuts in Medicaid, what happens to the elderly who are in nursing homes and what happens to their children in terms of trying to provide the help their parents desperately need?
The Republican budget would completely repeal the affordable health care act, preventing an estimated 34 million uninsured Americans from getting the health insurance they need.
At a time when the cost of college education is becoming out of reach for so many Americans, the Republican budget would slash college Pell grants by about 60 percent next year alone, reducing the maximum award from $5,500 to $2,100.
At a time when over 40 million Americans do not have enough money to feed themselves or their families, the Republican budget would kick some 10 million Americans off of food stamps. What kind of sense of morality is that, that when people today are struggling hard in order to feed themselves, we throw another 10 million people off food stamps?
It is no secret to anyone that our Nation's infrastructure is crumbling. The Republican budget passed in the House and supported by all but a handful of Republicans here in the Senate would slash funding for our roads, bridges, rail lines, transit systems, and airports by nearly 40 percent next year alone. One of two things would happen: Either, as a result of this, our infrastructure continues to deteriorate or else hard-pressed cities and towns are going to have to raise property taxes and other regressive taxes in order to come up with a differential. Yet, despite the fact -- we talked about cuts in health care, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition, environmental protection -- yet, despite all of those cuts, when it comes to military spending, which has tripled since 1997, the House Republican budget does nothing to reduce unnecessary defense spending. In fact, defense spending would go up by $26 billion next year alone under the Republican plan.
Interestingly enough, at a time when the rich are becoming richer, when the effective tax rates for the wealthiest people -- at 18 percent -- are about the lowest on record, at a time when the top 2 percent have received hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, at a time when corporate profits are at an alltime high and major corporations making billions of dollars in profits are not paying a nickel in taxes, my Republican colleagues, in their approach toward deficit reduction, do not ask the wealthiest people in this country or the largest corporations to contribute one penny -- one penny -- toward deficit reduction.
Poverty is increasing. Republicans cut programs for the most vulnerable people in this country. The middle class is disappearing, in need of great help. Republicans cut the safety line from them. The rich, who are getting richer, and large corporations, making huge profits and in many cases not paying anything in taxes at all, their requirement is to receive even more in terms of tax breaks.
Now, that may make sense to some people. It does not make sense to me. In fact, what the Republicans want to do is provide over $1 trillion in tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires by permanently extending all of the Bush income tax cuts, reducing the estate tax for multimillionaires and billionaires, and lowering the top individual and corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent. The rich get richer. They get tax breaks. The poor get poorer. They lose their ability to send their kids to college or to have nutrition programs or health care.
The Republican idea of moving toward a balanced budget is to go after the middle class working families and low-income people, and to make sure millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in this country, which are in many cases doing phenomenally well right now, do not have to share in the sacrifices being made by everybody else. They will be protected.
The Republican approach to deficit reduction in Washington is the Robin Hood philosophy in reverse: We take from the poorest people and we give to the richest people. And it is not as if that approach is good for our economy. Mark Zandi, the former economic adviser to John McCain when he was running for President, has estimated that the Republican budget plan will cost 1.7 million jobs by the year 2014, with 900,000 jobs lost next year alone.
The House Republican budget is breathtaking in its degree of cruelty. But do not take my word for it. In a letter to congressional leaders, after the House GOP plan was introduced, nearly 200 economists and health care experts wrote:
"Turning Medicare into a voucher program would undermine essential protections for millions of vulnerable people. It would extinguish the most promising approaches to curb costs and to improve the American medical care system."
Ezra Klein, a columnist at the Washington Post, wrote last April:
"The budget Ryan released is not courageous or serious or significant. It's a joke, and a bad one. For one thing, Ryan's savings all come from cuts, and at least two-thirds of them come from programs serving the poor. The wealthy, meanwhile, would see their taxes lowered, and the Defense Department would escape unscathed. It is not courageous to attack the weak while supporting your party's most inane and damaging fiscal orthodoxies. But the problem isn't just that Ryan's budget is morally questionable. It also wouldn't work.
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