Dueling Budget Bills

The chart above shows the differences between the Senate budget bill (proposed by Democrats) and the Ryan budget bill (which has been proposed by House Republicans). And the differences are huge.

The Republican bill contains no new revenues at all. In fact, it includes a big tax cut for the richest Americans -- cutting the top tax rate down to 25%. This will put billions of dollars back into the pockets of the Americans who need it the least -- the ones who are already making record profits and paying less in taxes than some in the middle class. And the bill is also a boon for the corporations in the military-industrial complex -- by making no cuts at all to the bloated military budget (a budget that has this country spending nearly half of the entire world's military spending).

But it does have cuts -- lots of cuts. Those cuts will only affect the most vulnerable Americans though. The bill will completely defund Obamacare, making sure 30 million Americans will get no health care coverage. It will also privatize most of Medicare, allowing private insurance companies to cherry-pick the healthiest older people, which will drive up the costs for the rest of the elderly. And then you have the other cuts to discretionary spending -- cuts for food stamps, for child school lunches, for Head Start, for environmental clean-up, for unemployment insurance, for education, and for myriad other programs that are helping hurting Americans to keep their heads above water.

Then there is the Democratic bill. This bill takes into consideration the wishes of the American public -- by combining reasonable cuts with new income (gotten through closing deduction loopholes on the wealthiest Americans. It combines $975 billion in new revenues with an equal amount in budget cuts (included reasonable targeted cuts to military spending). Multiple polls have shown that this is the path the general public in this country wants to take.

Frankly though, I doubt that either bill stands a chance of being passed. If the mean-spirited Republican bill passes the House, it will surely be killed in the Senate (or vetoed by the president). And if the Senate bill is passed, it will be summarily defeated in the House. Some may think that there will be some kind of bill passed that mixes the best of both bills, but that would require some compromise -- and that's something the Republicans are still unwilling to do. They are still too wrapped up in their far-right-wing ideology to compromise for the good of the country.

I expect we will see more continuing resolutions to keep the government going -- at least until the 2014 election. That is, unless the Republicans want to take the extreme step of shutting the government down. So far, they have threatened that and then backed down when push came to shove. I think they understand that shutting the government down could be disastrous for them in the 2014 elections.