Bill Kristol, who had predicted that Mitt Romney would name Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running-mate, expressed some concern Saturday morning that Republicans may have a hard time defending the GOP budget, which disproportionately cuts taxes for the rich.

“It’s the tax cuts for the wealthy, where Republicans have not done a particularly good job of defending it and I think you’ll see Democratic attacks focus on that side of the equation,” he said. The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore agreed, but noted, “who’s better to defend those policies that Paul is, I mean he knows this stuff better than anyone.” Watch it:

Paul Ryan’s infamous budget — which Romney embraced — replaces “the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.” Federal tax collections would fall “by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade” as a result. To avoid increasing the national debt, the budget proposes massive cuts in social programs and “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.”

But 62 percent of the savings would come from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, who would also experience a tax increase. That’s because while Ryan “would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama’s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time.” Households “earning more than $1 million a year, meanwhile, could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually.”

Mitt Romney has spent the week characterizing President Obama’s decision to grant waivers to states seeking innovative solutions for meeting the work requirements in welfare reform as gutting the program. In reality, the administration would require participating states “to increase the number of people transitioning from welfare to work by 20 percent” and require states to “demonstrate clear progress” in the first year of the waiver.

Interestingly, Romney’s newly-minted Vice Presidential running-mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), adopted a different approach as a congressman during the Bush administration. In 2002, Ryan folded a provision into a House-backed version of President Bush’s welfare reauthorization bill that provided his home state “a significant break in meeting new federal work rules,” lowering the work requirement from 70 percent to just 45 percent. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (4/3/2002):

Those measures — patterned after a Bush administration plan — require states to have 70% of their welfare recipients working by 2007. That’s compared with an average of about one-third now.

But under the change sought by Ryan, a Janesville Republican, the states with the biggest drop in their welfare caseloads since 1995 would have a lower threshold to meet.

Wisconsin had the third-biggest caseload drop between 1995 and 2001 — 76%. Under Ryan’s change, that would mean the state would need to have 54% of its welfare recipients working by 2007, instead of 70%. Sixteen other states would get relief under the change, but only two states would benefit more than Wisconsin.

Echoing language now employed by the Obama administration, Ryan argued that the provision would “give the state more flexibility in meeting the tough new federal work requirements expected to be enacted this year — including more use of education and training to help move people into better-paying jobs.”

“We need to be able to have the freedom to exercise discrimination on a case-by-case basis,” he said. Democrats approved the measure and “Ryan also got a provision included that is designed to make it easier for states to get broad waivers from federal rules in order to experiment with new programs.”

Ryan has since criticized the Obama administration’s welfare waiver, arguing that the policy would have the effect of “increasing welfare dependency without transitioning people back to work.” “That is not the American idea. That’s a welfare state,” he insisted.

Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his Vice Presidential running mate suggests that he will advocate strongly for the House Budget Chairman’s proposal if the ticket is elected in November. But there is one big problem: the budget is a big con. It gives massive tax breaks to corporations and the richest Americans, makes drastic cuts in social program, but still raises the deficit.

The document calls for $5 trillion in new tax cuts for the richest Americans and for corporations, on top of extending all of the Bush tax cuts. These include:

– Reducing the top income tax rate to 25 percent at a cost of more than $1 trillion

– Reducing the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent at a cost of more than $900 billion

– Repealing the alternative minimum tax entirely at a cost of nearly $650 billion

– Repealing the Affordable Care Act at a cost of more than $800 billion

– Removing the 15 percent bracket at a cost of more than $1.3 trillion

Ryan argues that he makes up for the lost revenue by “broadening the base” — and closing “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code” — though the budget itself “does not name a single existing loophole, deduction, credit, or exemption that it would change in any way.”

As CAP’s Michael Linden has pointed out, “with all the House budget’s tax cuts properly accounted for, revenue would average just 15.3 percent of GDP from 2013 through 2022, not 18.3 percent. The result: deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.”

The GOP’s “debt reduction” isn’t just based on fantasy levels of revenue — it’s based on “massive, unrealistic” spending cuts as well. Medicaid would face $1 trillion cuts in the first decade, while education and workforce training programs would get cut in half and transportation funding would be reduced by nearly 25 percent. The plan, which also ignores previous deals and increases defense spending, would also require deep cuts in other vital domestic programs.