The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010
I. Summary
The Roadmap for America’s Future, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) – the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee – released in late January, calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.[1]
The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households;
eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest;
and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax.
At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families,
privatize a substantial portion of Social Security,
eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance,
end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid,
and terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program.