Repug Id Revealed in House Budget: They Really Do Want You To Die Penniless in Excruciating Pain

You may have already read that the It-Came-From-the-Swamp GOP budget proposes essentially eliminating Medicare and Social Security.

But that's not enough for the Nihilist Party. As Christina Bellantoni at TPM explains, they're going to use the money they steal from your Social Security and Medicare to further enrich new Bernie Madoffs.

"If some Republicans are squeamish about Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal to privatize Social Security, there's plenty of tax cuts for the rich included in the plan they might find more to their liking.

TPMDC has been scouring the "Roadmap for America's Future" budget blueprint that Ryan, ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, proposed a few weeks ago. Among the nuggets that have GOPers running a bit scared are his plans to dramatically slash Social Security and Medicare benefits to cut the deficit.

Under the plan, Ryan (R-WI) also would give taxpayers a choice of a "simpler" system with just two tax brackets and he would repeal the corporate income tax. In its place he creates a "consumption tax" of 8.5 percent that experts tell us would unfairly burden the lower and middle classes. That's a tax on all goods and services that shifts the tax burden from corporations to individual consumers.

Ryan says the consumption tax for businesses will make it easier for the companies to "invest and create more jobs in the U.S."

"By reforming the entire tax code and removing these upward pressures on taxes [such as the AMT], this plan offers greater certainty so taxpayers can better plan for their financial futures," he wrote in the roadmap, which you can read here.

The roadmap has a GOP grab-bag of tax cuts, eliminating capital gains taxes, interest income taxes, the alternative minimum tax and estate tax Republicans dubbed the "death" tax. It also increases the standard deduction for tax filers.

"These are very, very dramatic changes in the tax code ... likely to lose a tremendous amount of revenue," said Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBBP).

Horney noted that the Congressional Budget Office evaluation doesn't take the revenue effects of the tax cuts into account. CBBP will be out soon with their own analysis.

However, the Ryan plan is remarkably similar to what then-presidential candidate Fred Thompson (R-TN) presented in 2007 before the GOP primary.

That had the "biggest tax cut in American history," and was a "huge reveune loser," totaling between $5 trillion and $7 trillion, Horney said.

The consumption tax would raise revenues but doesn't come anywhere close to offset the revenue lost from the tax cuts, Horney said.

Under the Ryan proposal, taxpayers could stick with the current tax plan or choose the "simplified" one which has just two brackets.

SNIP

Horney said he doesn't see why many Republicans are backing away from the plan as a political hot potato, saying it's consistent with policies they've supported for years.

And of course it's worse than that. Josh Marshall explains the politics behind the budget:

First, all evidence suggests that the Ryan budget is in fact what the great majority of the House Republican caucus believes and supports. It was the plan in 1994. It surfaced again with overwhelming support in 2005 and repeatedly, though with less fanfare, since then. And they have a very decent chance of becoming the majority party in the House next year. Second, and even more important, the Republicans have been running all year as the party to dramatically cut deficit spending. And the simple truth is that if you want to significantly move the needle on deficits and you rule out tax increases, you simply have no choice but to embrace a Ryan-like budget. There's no other way to get the kind of money they claim they're going to trim. No way.

And here's where you get to the essential political question and the issue that is likely to define 2010. In the second half of 2009, Republicans went very quickly -- perhaps a tad too quickly for their own good -- from a party seen as hopelessly in the wilderness to one with a very reasonable shot at becoming the governing party. And that's taken the rhetoric that was being thrown around easily and made it extremely relevant to find out whether they were serious about any of that rhetoric. Because again, it all comes down to this budget.

Read the whole thing.

Don't let anybody babble about repugs cutting taxes and the deficit without telling them exactly what the repugs have admitted, in writing, they really want to do.