Over the past two weeks, a couple of charts — one from yours truly and one from Rex Nutting at MarketWatch — have really riled up conservatives and confused a fair number of DC establishment media types. For the past three years, it has been an article of faith among those folks that President Obama went on some kind of spending binge. And a casual glance at yearly spending figures does appear to support that charge. But what my chart and Rex’s chart show is that, once you account for the fact that most of the increase in spending from fiscal year 2008 to 2009 happened before President Obama even took office, then the “binge” utterly vanishes.

And this is the key point. The only way to show that spending has gone up dramatically under President Obama is to pretend like he had complete control over what was spent in fiscal year 2009. And that notion is utterly false.

First of all, recall that President Obama took office nearly four months into fiscal year 2009. That simple fact, all by itself, is enough to discount any “analysis” that merely compares fiscal year 2008 spending to fiscal year 2009, and tries to attribute the entire difference to President Obama.

But it actually goes beyond that. By the time President Obama took office, nearly all the dramatic increase in spending had already been baked into the cake. How do we know that? Well, in January 2009, before President Obama had even taken office, the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal spending would exceed $3.5 trillion for fiscal year 2009, half a trillion more than the government spent in 2008. Again, that was BEFORE President Obama event took office. It’s reasonable to use that number as our best guess at what spending would have been in FY2009 under ANY president. That’s what my chart from last week did.

Of course, the CBO’s projections aren’t perfect. They change as the economy changes and as laws change. Fortunately, CBO also tells us in subsequent reports how and why its previous estimates have changed. We can use that to understand how much of the total federal spending in fiscal year 2009 was attributable to legislative changes that occurred AFTER President Obama took office.

The answer is that out of a total of $3.5 trillion actually spent in FY09, only $165 billion, less than 5 percent, was the result of policy changes signed into law by President Obama.

In other words, probably the best baseline against which to judge spending under Obama is $3.5 trillion (the amount actually spent in 2009) minus $165 billion (the added amount Obama himself actually approved): $3.35 trillion. This year, the CBO expects that the federal government will spend $3.6 trillion. After accounting for inflation, that’s a growth rate of just 1.7 percent. By comparison, and using the exact same methodology, spending in President Bush’s first term was up nearly 15 percent.

Here’s the bottom line: there was a large increase in government spending in fiscal year 2009, but most of that that surge wasn’t President Obama’s doing. It would have happened no matter who was President. And since then, for better or for worse, spending growth under President Obama has been incredibly restrained. This doesn’t jibe with the conventional wisdom and it requires a touch more effort to understand than simply pretending President Obama inherited a blank fiscal slate. But it’s the truth.

The House GOP budget seemingly embraces that model, calling for massive reductions in spending like those that have led to double-dip recessions across Europe. And though analyses have found that the budget, which Ryan authored, would actually add to the national debt, the GOP’s vision is necessary to address joblessness and avoid austerity, he said:

RYAN: What we’re saying is let’s get on growth and prevent austerity. The whole premise of our budget is to pre-empt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth, and preventing Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That pre-empts austerity. The president, his budget, the fact the Senate hasn’t done a budget in three years, puts us on a path towards European-like austerity. That’s what we’re trying to prevent from happening in the first place.

Watch it:

Not only would Ryan’s plan add to the debt, it would also increase the number of people who are looking for a job, resulting in a net loss of 4.1 million jobs over the next two years, according to the Economic Policy Institute:

The Ryan budget would nevertheless immediately enact aggressive spending cuts — particularly to the social safety net — which would reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.

Ryan claims he wants to avoid European-style austerity, rein in the debt, and put people back to work. His plan, however, would end similarly to European austerity, leading to higher levels of debt and an unnecessary and unneeded spike in joblessness.

Romney isn’t the only one decrying the debt while ignoring that his budget would make it worse. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), in an appearance on Fox News this morning, made the laughable claim that a budget that explodes the debt will simultaneously prevent a debt crisis:

RYAN: More to the point, though, the kind of budget Mitt Romney is talking about is one that prevents a debt crisis.

Watch it:

Ryan praised Romney’s 20 percent, across-the-board tax cuts that are paid for, he claims, by closing loopholes that primarily benefit the wealthy. The only problem with that, of course, is that Romney hasn’t laid out such a plan, and even if he did, it wouldn’t make up enough revenue to avoid adding trillions to the national debt.

This isn’t anything new from Ryan. Though he paints himself as a very serious person who is trying to reduce the debt, he authored the House GOP’s radical budget plan, which manages to add to the debt despite cutting spending on programs that help the poor and middle classes because, like Romney, he gives away trillions in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

As the Associated Press reported today, “Romney’s tax and spending plans don’t support his vow to dampen the debt fire.” But don’t tell that to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who said to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that Romney’s tax plan won’t blow up the deficit:

SCARBOROUGH: So you talk about Mitt Romney talking about how he’s going to be responsible. You look at Mitt Romney’s plans, though, you add them all up, the deficit goes up as much under Mitt Romney as it does under Barack Obama. You know, if you look at their plans, there’s not a big difference.

RYAN: Oh, there’s a huge difference. Are you kidding me?

SCARBOROUGH: At the end of the day Paul, how much is the national debt going to be reduced under Mitt Romney’s tax plans and spending plans?

RYAN: So, under Mitt Romney’s tax plan, he’s keeping revenues where they historically have been, which they actually rise from where they are now, just like our budget does.

Watch it:

But Romney has simply asserted that his tax plan will be deficit neutral, because he will limit tax deductions for the richest Americans, without laying out any way to actually achieve that end. He’s even admitted that this rather relevant part of his plan is missing.

And he hasn’t laid out the spending plans that would supposedly cut the deficit either. As the AP put it, “the closest [Romney] has come to laying out a specific spending plan has been in his endorsement of the budget blueprint passed this year by House Republicans, which also fails to produce his promised deficit reductions.”

Even if Romney actually followed through on his pledge to limits deductions for the rich, he would need 6.5 percent economic growth for the next five years to keep his tax plan from adding to the deficit. The best five-year period of growth since World War II was from 1961 to 1966, when the economy grew at 5.8 percent per year, meaning Romney would have to see the greatest growth of the post-war period simply to keep his tax plan out of the red.

Of course, this is just par for the course for Ryan, who pulled the same trick with the House Republican budget, pledging to close tax loopholes and limit deductions, but refusing to give any specifics.

Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news.

In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.

Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.

One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.

The fact is that Obama inherited a disaster of a federal budget. Eight years prior, when President George W. Bush took the oath of office, there was a $281 billion surplus. By the time Obama was sworn in, he was facing a $1.2 trillion deficit. Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.

More than 60 percent of the spending cuts in the GOP budget would come from programs that benefit the poor, including food assistance, Women, Infant, and Children programs, and potentially even tax credits that have huge effects on poverty and hunger. Those cuts would undoubtedly not only hurt adults in struggling families, but harm children as well. According to a new report from the Half In Ten project at the Center for American Progress, millions of children will lose assistance from a number of services, as the following infographic shows:

As Half In Ten’s Melissa Boteach noted yesterday, the GOP budget would also boot nearly 280,000 children from school lunch programs, even while protecting a massive tax break for multimillionaires.

Under the guise of creating economic prosperity, Republicans have pursued a tax-and-cut ideology with reckless abandon over the last two years, taking the axe to vital social safety net programs while also cutting tax rates on the wealthy. The casualties of the Republican agenda, however, are not numbers on a chart — they are poor kids who are struggling to survive.

Rep. Paul Ryan and his on-again, off-again political inspiration, Ayn Rand

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Ryan also noted in a 2003 interview with the Weekly Standard, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”

But today, Ryan is singing a far different tune.

From an interview with National Review’s Bob Costa this week:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

It’s understandable why Ryan would back off his former political muse. She described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages.” Learn more about Ayn Rand in this short ThinkProgress video:

Despite Ryan’s newly-professed distaste for Rand, were she alive today, she would likely applaud Ryan for his draconian GOP budget, which cuts food stamps and other programs for the poor, ends Medicare as we know it, gives $3 trillion in tax breaks for corporations and the rich, and raises taxes on the poorest Americans.

Since the demise of the super committee tasked with identifying the savings, the GOP has relied on the House-passed Budget Resolution to initiate a budget reconciliation process that would eliminate or disperse the $600 billion of proposed reductions to military spending to other federal agencies. Now, in a memo from the Republican leadership to its members, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), spell out how they plan to generate “savings” in mandatory programs that “would first be used to offset the cost (approximately $78 billion) of replacing the automatic across-the-board discretionary spending cuts” and “further reduce the deficit.”

As it turns out, Republicans’ plan to protect the ballooning defense budget will come at a significant cost to lower-income Americans, women, and children, as well as the nation’s financial security. ThinkProgress has compiled a table of just some of the consequences of the GOP’s cuts:

Under the Affordable Care Act, families between 100 and 400 percent of federal poverty line (FPL) qualify for government assistance when purchasing health coverage through the state-based exchanges. The government will pay insurance companies a refundable amount based on an estimate of the family’s annual income (the assistance is available on a sliding scale in which higher-income earners receive smaller subsidies). Should a family’s income change during the year (were a single mother marries in the middle of the year, for instance), it is required to pay the government back a specific capped amount come tax season. Congress has increased the fee twice since the law was enacted (the original legislation set the cap at around $400) and now the Republicans are hoping to boost the amount to the full overpayment.

The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the higher tax bill would discourage 350,000 people from signing up for the subsidies in the first place. Many would be dissuaded from enrolling in insurance because “the amounts they could be required to repay to the IRS if they received subsidies would be more than five times higher than the penalty they would owe if they remained uninsured in 2014.” Judith Solomon and Robert Greenstein explain what this means:

If the caps on repayment are eliminated, the amounts that families would be required to repay in 2014 would, in many cases, be well over five times the penalty they would face in 2014 under the ACA’s individual mandate if they failed to obtain coverage. [...]

Our analysis indicates that 38 percent of the estimated $43.9 billion in savings credited to this provision comes from the reduction in the number of people who would enroll in coverage in the exchanges.

As noted, because people who decided to forgo coverage would disproportionately be healthy individuals, the pool of people enrolling with the exchanges would be sicker on average, which would push up everyone’s premiums for insurance. The higher premiums, in turn, would lead additional healthy people to forgo coverage. The result would be “adverse selection” that could weaken the viability of the exchanges. For some families, the result also would be huge marriage penalties, as the example cited at the beginning of this analysis shows. Under the House provision, the family in that example would owe the IRS almost $5,000 as a result of getting married during the year.

Solomon and Greenstein note that this repayment system is fairly unique — after all provisions that penalize people who marry or obtain jobs don’t make for smart policy. Other programs, they write, are based on eligibility on current income so that “if a household’s income rises during the year, it ceases to receive assistance or receives a reduced benefit, but it is not made to pay back the aid it received during its period of need.” And the Affordable Care Act itself takes great pains to ensure that families don’t receive more government dollars than they’re entitled to. Under rules issued by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, applicants are required “to validate and update the information on their prior tax return; if their income has increased in the interim, the updated information must be used to determine their subsidy amount.”

But all this matters little to a Republican party eager to enact the Ryan budget and unravel President Obama’s signature health care law.

Using Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) budget blueprint, Ohio Republicans added language that takes away all federal funding to “abortion providers,” including Planned Parenthood. But Planned Parenthood does more than provide abortions (that’s only 3 percent of their work). The amended Ohio budget would strip away much of Planned Parenthood’s ability to fight domestic violence, and deny them funds for cancer and HIV/AIDS prevention as well:

In addition to restricting the flow of federal “family planning” funds, House Bill 487, sponsored by Representative Ron Amstutz and adopted without a recorded vote by members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee, completely prohibits the distribution to Planned Parenthood of Ohio or any of its affiliates from any of the following federal programs:

• Violence Against Women Act
• Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act
• Infertility Prevention Project (US Dept of Health & Human Services)
• Minority HIV/AIDS initiative funds (Centers for Disease Control)

In 2010 (the latest year available), 105 victims of domestic violence were killed in Ohio. There were a total of 40,283 arrests of people who physically harmed their partner or family members. The Violence Against Women Act works to prevent incidents of rape and sexual assaults, and ensures that people who are victims of domestic violence get the health care and legal protection they need in the wake of a domestic violence incident. It’s wrong, and harmful, for lawmakers to drag domestic violence victims into their political vendetta against Planned Parenthood.

“We’ve seen all week, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader [Harry] Reid continuing to scheme and plot trying to find some way to get their big government takeover of health care enacted,” then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in January of 2010, setting the tone for the Republican outrage. Shortly thereafter, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced a resolution stating “that the House disapproves of the malfeasant manner in which the Democratic Leadership has thereby discharged the duties of their offices” and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) took to the floor and accused Democrats of “greasing the skids for an abuse of the budget procedure.” “The arrogance, the paternalism, the condescension to the American people is just breathtaking,” Ryan declared. “This is not just a simple fixer bill either. This is the linchpin for healthcare.”

Well, what a difference two years make. Despite vociferously opposing “deem and pass” in 2010 — a tactic the Democrats ultimately abandoned — Republicans are now relying on the procedure to advance their budget resolution. Yesterday, the GOP claimed that “deem and pass” was necessary to “set in motion a 2013 fiscal plan in the absence of an action or agreement with the other chamber” and approved the measure in a vote of 228-184:

GOP leaders are advancing the House Republican budget and its proposed changes to Medicare despite opposition in the Democratic-led Senate by using used a relatively obscure procedural move — tucking it alongside an unrelated bill that would allow the importation of trophy polar bears.

In considering the sportsmen’s hunting legislation, the House approved a provision Tuesday that essentially “deems” the budget from Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) passed, even though the blueprint with its tax breaks and cuts to domestic programs was dead on arrival in the Senate.

Public opinion surveys show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the House budget blueprint and its changes to the Medicare program. A United Technologies/National Journal poll from March found that 64 percent believe that “Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government … paying doctors and hospitals directly for the services they provide to seniors,” including “a solid 56 percent to 30 percent majority of Republicans.”

As if that weren’t enough, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the budget also raises taxes for low-income Americans:

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has published new numbers that show the Ryan plan would raise taxes on low-income working families — those making up to $30,000 a year. That’s because, while he 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. Our updated report gives the details.

Ryan is, of course, taking up a fight Republicans have been waging for most of the last year. For instance, while working to ensure that the rich won’t face any tax increases any time soon, the GOP tried to block extension of a payroll tax cut, which primarily benefits the middle class, before finally relenting early this year. The GOP has also pushed the myth that nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes in order to distort debates about tax fairness.

A majority of the Republican caucus has signed onto the radical anti-tax pledge authored by Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist, assuring Americans that they would not raise taxes under any circumstance. But as their budget makes clear, Republicans do indeed support raising taxes in their quest to balance the budget, as long as those tax increases only hit the Americans who can afford them least.

As ThinkProgress noted Tuesday, Ryan’s budget seems to ignore Catholic social teaching that calls for protecting the poor and improving access to food, jobs, health care, housing, and the social safety net. And now religious leaders are making the same case. The founder of the PICO National Network, the largest national coalition of religious congregations, slammed Ryan’s claim of adherence to Catholic teaching as “the height of hypocrisy” in a release circulated Wednesday:

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for Rep. Ryan to claim that his approach to the budget is shaped by Catholic teaching and values,” said Fr. John Baumann, S.J., founder of PICO National Network. [...] “A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.”

“By these measures,” the release says, “the Ryan budget is a severe failure,” noting that it cuts Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps, and “other programs that help vulnerable working families make it through tough times and live better lives,” while giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and corporations. Overall, 62 percent of Ryan’s budget cuts come from programs that benefit the poor. “The mission of the Church is to ‘bring good news to the poor’ and to protect the vulnerable, not to justify the impoverishment of the very young, the very old and the sick in order to enrich the wealthy,” the release says.

This isn’t the first time religious leaders have criticized the House GOP budget. When Ryan released the budget in March, Bishop Gene Robinson called it an “immoral disaster” that “robs the poor,” and Father Thomas Kelly, a constituent of Ryan’s, said he was “outraged” that Ryan defended the budget “on moral grounds.” Last year’s Ryan budget faced similar criticism, as religious leaders blasted it for adhering more closely to the policies of anti-religion, anti-government author Ayn Rand than to the teachings of the Bible.

That echoed the backlash Ryan received last year, but it hasn’t stopped him from attempting to use Catholic social teaching to support his budget. “A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan told the Christian Broadcast Network, before saying the Catholic principles of subsidiarity and the preferential option for the poor guided his plan:

Those principles are very very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty out onto life of independence.

Watch it, courtesy of the Christian Broadcast Network:

Though Timothy Dolan, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, gave some mild praise to Ryan’s “attention to the poor” in 2011, the budget seems to contradict the Catholic Church’s voting guide and standards on how to address domestic poverty. In “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a voting guide produced by the USCCB, the Church outlines a specific message on welfare policy, saying it “should reduce poverty and dependency, strengthen family life, and help families leave poverty through work, training, and assistance with child care, health care, housing, and transportation. It should also provide a safety net for those who cannot work.” Later, it defines an even more specific approach to food assistance and nutrition policy:

A first priority for agriculture policy should be food security for all. Because no one should face hunger in a land of plenty, Food Stamps, the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and other nutrition programs need to be strong and effective.

Ryan’s budget, however, does just the opposite. More than 60 percent of its cuts come from programs that help the poor. It would kick millions out of SNAP, (the federal food stamp program) and would gut the Women, Infant, and Children nutrition program. Food stamps lifted millions of women and children out of poverty in 2009, while tax credits and other programs benefiting low-income families (which could be cut by Ryan’s plan to end such credits) kept millions of women and children out of poverty. And it guts Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, ignoring the Church’s teachings on health care.

Ryan’s belief that those programs create dependency on the government have also been proven false. Far from creating dependency, social welfare programs are shrinking as the economy continues its recovery.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s belief in subsidiarity — the idea that programs for the poor should be handled by local actors — denies reality when it comes to social welfare programs. State and local governments don’t have the capacity to manage welfare programs like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC, all of which address areas the Church says should be protected. Neither do local charities or churches. During the Great Recession, as the number of impoverished Americans ballooned, donations fell and churches and local charities were often stretched beyond their means, left unable to help many of the most vulnerable members of their communities.

Ryan’s budget ignores that the Catholic Church’s teachings regarding the poor often align closely with those of progressives. Pope Benedict XVI, in fact, has called for greater governmental attention to the poor and redistribution of wealth to address rising income inequality. Ryan’s views, however, adhere more closely to author Ayn Rand, who denounced religion, opposed governmental aid to the poor and middle class, and, despite his supposed adherence to Catholic social teaching, was Ryan’s inspiration to enter politics.

Charles Blahous

“Does the health-care act worsen the deficit? The answer, I think, is clearly that it does,” Blahous, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, said in an interview. “If one asserts that this law extends the solvency of Medicare, then one is affirming that this law adds to the deficit. Because the expansion of the Medicare trust fund and the creation of the new subsidies together create more spending than existed under prior law.” [...]

Medicare is financed in part through a trust fund that receives revenue from payroll taxes. Before Obama’s health-care act passed, the trust fund was projected to be drained by 2017 (later updated to 2016). Absent the health-care law, Blahous writes, Medicare would have been forced to enact a sharp reduction in benefit payments in the middle of this decade, or “other Medicare savings would have had to be found.”

Enter the health-care law, which provides about $575 billion in Medicare savings — enough to automatically extend the life of the trust fund through 2029, according to estimates at the time, and avoid a sharp cut in benefits. But in cost estimates by the nonpartisan CBO, those savings also offset a dramatic expansion of Medicaid under the law, as well as new subsidies for uninsured people to purchase coverage.

What Blahous calls “double counting” is actually the “unified budget process,” an accounting method that considers the spending and revenues of the entire federal budget over a 10 year period and the way Congress keeps track of its dollars. It’s the same math that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) relied on to conclude in 2010 that the law “would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010–2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenues.” Earlier this week, the CBO updated its estimate, reporting that the Affordable Care Act is expected to cost $50 billion less than they anticipated and Medicare actuaries reported that as a result of the savings in the law, the life of Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) Fund is extended to 2024, instead of in 2016.

Here is how the accounting process works: revenue or savings from the law enters the general fund of the federal treasury, where it is counted towards deficit reduction. The money is credited to the Medicare trust fund, which receives a treasury security that will be paid out in interest when necessary. Should the trust fund cash in its bond, that money is transferred from the general treasury to the fund. However, since the same revenue cannot be used to reduce the deficit and extend the life of the trust fund, Treasury would have to find that money somewhere else. But, given the principles of unified accounting, that money is said to reduce the deficit and extend the life of the fund.

As Jonathan Blum, the director of the Center for Medicare Management for CMS, explains, “I think it’s been a historical, and longstanding budget convention that when you have less dollars paid to the Medicare program to pay for benefits, there are dollars that accrue to the overall federal treasury, that can be spent for other purposes. And this is an OMB, CBO budget convention.”

The federal government has in fact used this kind of system from time immemorial — including in the GOP’s latest budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — and Republicans have long argued that they would use Medicare savings for deficit reduction AND strengthening the program. Consider this 1997 press release from the Senate Republican Policy Committee making this very same case about the Balanced Budget Act:

– Getting to a Zero Deficit: This legislation is necessary despite continued improvement in the federal deficit. Without the federal policy changes contained in the reconciliation bill, the deficit under CBO’s most recent estimates (without the so-called fiscal dividend that balance will yield) would double to $139 billion by 2002. The deficit was $107 billion in FY 1996 and is currently projected to be $67 billion this year. However, without this legislation, it will not get to zero. The positive economic performance to date largely has been due to low inflation and business restructuring at home and the opening of new markets overseas that has resulted in higher-than-anticipated receipts.

– Medicare: The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA 97) makes the most significant changes to the Medicare program — the federal government’s health care program for all seniors — since its inception in the 1960s. It modernizes the program by granting new health care options for seniors — while maintaining and strengthening the traditional system. Further, it more equitably distributes federal managed care and new Medicare Choice payments between geographic regions. It also extends the life of the program’s funding mechanism, the Medicare trust fund (known as the HI or Part A trust fund).

Conservatives are now asking the federal government to embrace a different standard of trust fund accounting rules, which look at changes over a much longer period of time. But this argument is fundamentally disingenuous and it changes the rules in the middle of the game. Every member of Congress knows that the CBO’s scores are “God” and that members of both parties rely on the budget office’s numbers and models to move legislation.

Were Democrats to draft a health bill that comported to trust fund accounting rules, rather than unified budget accounting rules, they could have produced a poor CBO score and would have been criticized for increasing the deficit. Now, Republicans are demanding that the law meet the standards of new math that they themselves don’t abide by. It’s not surprising to see a partisan economist put forward these new numbers who, like his greatest supporter Mitch McConnell, is more interested in defeating Obama than working with him to solve the nation’s health care problems.

“We’re told that Medicaid would simply be handed over to the states,” Obama explained. “But here’s the deal the states would be getting. They’d have to be running these programs in the face of the largest cut to Medicaid that has ever been proposed.” According to the Center on Budget and policy Priorities, the Ryan budget would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by $810 billion and would provide states with smaller “block grants” to run their health care programs. “A cut that according to one nonpartisan group would take away health care for about 19 million Americans,” Obama said, before turning to the GOP’s proposal to transform Medicare into a premium support structure:

OBAMA: Instead of being enrolled in medicare when they turn 65, seniors to retire a decade from now would get a voucher that equals the cost of the second cheapest health care plan in their area. If Medicare is more expensive than at private plan, they will have to pay more if they want to enroll in traditional Medicare. If health care costs rise faster than the amount of the voucher, as, by the way, they have been doing for decades, that’s too bad. Seniors bear the risk. If the voucher is not enough to buy private plan with bit specific doctors and carry need, that’s too bad. Most experts will tell you the way this voucher plan encourages savings is not through better care or cheaper costs. The way these private insurance companies save money is by designing and marketing plans to attract the youngest and healthiest seniors, cherry picking, leaving the older and sicker seniors in traditional Medicare where they have access to a wide range of doctors and guaranteed care, but that makes the traditional Medicare program even more expensive and raises premiums even further. The net result is our country will end up spending more on health care and the only reason the government will save any money is at — is because we have shifted it to seniors. They will bear more of the costs themselves. It is a bad idea. It will ultimately end Medicare as we know it.

Watch it:

Indeed, a Center for American Progress analysis of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data finds that new Medicare beneficiaries could actually end up paying as much as $1,200 more per year by 2030 and $5,900 more per year by 2050 for health care benefits. The Republican budget would shift these costs to beneficiaries by limiting the growth in Medicare spending per beneficiary to growth in the economy plus 0.5 percentage points — a rate that is much slower than the projected growth rate under current law.

As a result, under their budget, CBO projects that average spending would rise to only $7,400 in 2030 and to only $11,100 in 2050. Since the Republican budget would convert Medicare spending into vouchers, these dollar amounts would be the amounts of the vouchers, on average. In other words, “CBO projects that government spending per beneficiary would be $1,200 lower in 2030 (the difference between $8,600 under current law and $7,400 under the Republican budget) and $5,900 lower in 2050 (the difference between $17,000 under current law and $11,100 under the Republican budget).”

The Republican budget never specifies how it planst to enforce its cap on Medicare spending and in the absence of any other enforcement mechanism, it’s likely that the cap would be enforced by limiting the amount of vouchers provided to beneficiaries. After all, we know that capping the vouchers is the clear policy goal of Republicans—we need look no further than the budget they proposed last year. The vouchers, therefore, would likely be capped at CBO’s projected spending per beneficiary under the Republican budget: $7,400 in 2030 and $11,100 in 2050. And since these amounts would be much lower than actual costs, beneficiaries would be left to pay the difference.

The House passed Ryan’s newest iteration of the “Path to Prosperity” budget last week, and immediately, multiple Republicans faced backlash from their constituents. Voters gathered outside the Duluth, Minnesota office of Rep. Chip Cravaack (R), calling for a budget that preserves vital safety net programs like Medicare and raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help pay down the debt.

Watch a news report on the protest:

Protesters also gathered outside the office of Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick and chastised his support for a budget “only the 1 percent could love,” MSNBC reports:

Outside the office building by the Oxford Valley Mall, members of Pennsylvania Working Families, held signs and chanted: “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” [...]

“The Ryan budget, which Fitzpatrick fully supports, is all about cuts to the poor and middle class and tax breaks for billionaires and corporations,” said Steve Nathan of Sellersville, one of Tuesday’s protesters. “There’s nothing in it about job creation.”

The House GOP budget is likely to face even more protests as members return to their districts for the spring recess, considering that Republicans ignored Americans’ opposition to last year’s budget and have shown, repeatedly, that they favor raising taxes on the wealthy and preserving programs like Medicare. The Republican budget does neither, instead gutting Medicare while giving the richest Americans a massive tax break.

RYAN: I really misspoke, to be candid with you, Candy. I didn’t mean to make that kind of impression. So, I was clumsy in describing the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make — and General Dempsey and I spoke after that. I wanted to give that point to him, which is that’s not what I was attempting to say. [...]

CROWLEY: You have apologized to him?

RYAN: Yeah, I called him to tell him that.

Watch it:

On ABC’s This Week, Ryan also said he “totally misspoke,” and claimed, “My issue is I think that the president’s budget on the Pentagon is a budget-driven strategy, not a strategy-driven budget.” But even that statement is a false attack on the generals.

After ThinkProgress reported earlier last week that Ryan said he doesn’t “think the generals are giving their true advice,” Gen. Dempsey explicitly said, “My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”

The letter (PDF) defending the so-called international affairs budget that covers non-military spending went on:

Development and diplomacy keep us safer by addressing threats in the most dangerous corners of the world and by preventing conflicts before they occur. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian-led programs are especially critical at a time when we are asking them to take on greater responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Addressing today’s challenges with civilian tools costs far less than it does to send in the military in dollars and, more importantly, in terms of the risks to the lives of our men and women in uniform. At just over one percent of federal spending, the International Affairs Budget is a strong return on our investment.

The letter comes just a week after Republican Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a budget that called for the international affairs spending to be slashed by 11 percent, or $6 billion, while boosting military spending by at least $8 billion. Ryan’s budget document took shots at the administration, noting in one section that Obama “has chosen to subordinate national security strategy to his other spending priorities.” Speaking to U.S. News and World Report, Russell Rumbaugh, a former senior Senate Budget Committee aide now with the Stimson Center, said:

This reflects more an ideological statement than any real discussion about what the international budget levels should be.

An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran summed up the Republican plan: “They cut every tool in the president’s toolbox that isn’t a gun,” said Michael Breen, who works with the Truman National Security Project, recounting how it was a foreign language-enabled diplomat — not their own weapons — that once helped him and fellow soliders get out a jam.

The ostensible aspirations of the Ryan plan, meanwhile, are shared by the USGLC letter signatories, who wrote that they “recognize that we must reduce our nation’s debt.” Yet, with non-military spending such a relatively small piece of the pie and capable of a “strong return” on the investment, the ex-military leaders urged Congress to “support a strong and effective International Affairs Budget and oppose disproportionate cuts to this vital account.”