On Politics Nation Monday, Rev. Al detailed the devastating impact that the Paul Ryan-authored House Republican budget, embraced whole-heartedly by Mitt Romney, would have on programs that poor and working Americans depend on. The GOP has justified these radical cuts by arguing that an across-the-board belt-tightening is the only way to get the deficit in order.
But Jared Bernstein, a former top economist in the Obama White House, eloquently pointed out the hollowness of that claim. Bernstein told Sharpton:
Amidst all these cuts of Ryan and Romney, what we haven't yet pointed out is that on the other side of those cuts are literally trillions of dollars of tax breaks aimed at those at the very top of the income scale. $4.6 trillion under Ryan, added to about 4 and a half trillion by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. So you're talking about $9 trillion dollars of tax cuts. It's as if you looked at America and you figured out the problem is that low-income people have too much money and too many jobs, and rich people do't have enough, and darn it, we're gonna fix it.
Worth keeping in mind the next time conservatives, or Beltway "centrists", for that matter, tell you Ryan's budget is just a responsible attempt to spare our children from that crushing burden of debt.