Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said he would not support revenue increases in budget negotiations with Democrats during an appearance on Bloomberg TV Tuesday morning, explaining that the nation must reform the tax code by lowering rates and “plugging loopholes” and achieve a balanced budget with spending cuts alone.

“We propose 4.6 trillion dollars in spending cuts that are essential to preventing debt crisis,” Ryan claimed, referring to reductions in spending from the repeal of Affordable Care Act benefits and savings from Medicaid, Medicare and other social programs. Nearly two-thirds of the House GOP’s cuts come from poverty programs that aid the neediest Americans like Pell Grants, food stamps and job training.

Ryan insisted that Republicans would demand these reductions and stand united against additional revenue since, as he put it, Democrats “got their tax increases…but we have yet to get any spending cuts”:

PETER COOK (REPORTER): Isn’t that going to require Paul Ryan to consider revenue and for [Senator] Patty Murray to consider entitlement program changes that she has decided on?

RYAN: Well, I would say to the Patty Murray school of thought to the President Obama school of thought, they’ve got their tax increases. They got $1.6 trillion in tax increases that are just now starting to hit the economy. But we have yet to get the spending cuts. [...]

PETER COOK: Aren’t you going to have to offer something more on the revenue front even if you don’t want to?

RYAN: No offense Peter, I’m not interested in negotiating through the media, but to be candid, no. No. We reform the tax code, that’s what we’re proposing that means that by plugging loopholes you can raise the same amount of money for the federal government with a far more competitive, far more pro-jobs tax code than we currently got.

Past budget deals have reduced spending by $1.5 trillion, a fact Ryan himself bragged about when he urged Republicans to back the Budget Control Act in 2011 and later endorsed sequestration. “We’re actually cutting spending while we do this,” Ryan told his colleagues in 2011. “We’re getting two-thirds of the cuts we wanted in our budget.”

Indeed, spending cuts have so far outnumbered revenue by nearly 3 to 1, which is why economists believe that “the next installment of deficit reduction should reach $2 trillion and about half of it should come from higher taxes.” Ryan, meanwhile, has told voters for more than three years that he would pay for his massive tax breaks by closing tax loopholes without ever specifying which deductions or credits he plans to eliminate.

Last year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his radical House budget rode a wave of conservative popularity all the way to a spot on the Republican Party’s presidential ticket. Six months and one resounding electoral defeat later, Ryan’s popularity has collapsed and even his Republican allies are disavowing his ‘cut first, ask questions later’ approach to the federal budget. And yet for the third straight year, Ryan has put forth a plan that would gut Medicare for future beneficiaries, reduce spending on programs that primarily benefit low-income women and children, protect tax loopholes for oil companies and Wall Street banks, and lower taxes on millionaires and billionaires.

Last week, Democrats unveiled a budget proposal of their own, one that stands in stark contrast to the plan put forth by House Republicans. Here’s a quick look at the key differences between Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) proposal and Ryan’s:

The House Republican budget’s vast spending cuts are overwhelmingly aimed at low-income Americans, so much so that nearly two-thirds of its budget cuts would come from poverty programs that aid the neediest people in the nation, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the plan’s author, claims his budget will cut a total $4.6 trillion in spending by using a baseline that includes current policies like the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, among other policies. By counting those cuts and other policies that are unlikely to remain in tact, CBPP estimates that the House Republican plan would cut even more — a total of $5 trillion. Of that, 66 percent of the cuts — a total of $3.3 trillion — would come from programs that help low-income Americans, CBPP found:

This version of the House GOP plan cuts even more from low-income programs than the 2012 version, which found 62 percent of its cuts from similar sources. That version was even more draconian than its predecessor, meaning Ryan’s budgets have gotten more devastating for the poor each year.

The social safety net keeps millions of Americans out of poverty each year, but the House GOP plan seeks to convert many of them, including food stamps, into block grants to states that follow the model of the 1996 welfare reform law that has failed to help children and families in poverty, particularly during and after the Great Recession. At the same time, Ryan’s plan provides $5.7 trillion in tax cuts aimed largely at the wealthy and corporations. Under his proposal, the average millionaire would see a tax cut of at least $200,000.

The latest House Republican budget would grant taxpayers with incomes above $1 million at least $200,000 in tax cuts even if the GOP closes tax loopholes to help pay for the plan, according to an analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice.

The GOP plan, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), aims to reduce the top income tax rate to 25 percent and repeals many other taxes on the rich, including the Alternative Minimum Tax and increases included in Obamacare. Ryan wants to pay for the tax cut by closing loopholes and ending tax expenditures. The budget didn’t specify which loopholes and expenditures would be eliminated, but even if all of them that benefit the rich were done away with (except for preferences for capital gains and other investments, which Ryan has said he will keep), the budget would grant millionaires a tax cut in excess of $200,000. If it doesn’t eliminate loopholes, the tax cut would only grow larger, CTJ found:

In fact, under Ryan’s plan taxpayers with income exceeding $1 million in 2014 would receive an average net tax decrease of over $200,000 that year even if they had to give up all of their tax expenditures. These taxpayers would see an even larger net tax decrease if Congress failed to limit or eliminate enough tax expenditures to offset the costs of the proposed tax cuts.

Like former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Ryan insists that his plan will simultaneously grant a large tax cut to the wealthy, avoid tax increases on the lower- and middle-classes, and maintain the current level of revenue. The Tax Policy Center found during the election that those goals were impossible to maintain under Romney’s proposal and that to avoid adding to future deficits and debt, the plan would have to raise taxes on the middle class by an average of $2,000.

The current House GOP proposal provides an even bigger tax cut, making it even less likely that Ryan could raise sufficient revenues from the closure of tax loopholes to offset the estimated $5.7 trillion cost. To pay for the plan, then, the GOP would have no choice but to raise taxes on the middle class (by an average of $3,000) while granting a massive tax cut to millionaires. If it doesn’t, the Republican plan to reduce the debt will instead add trillions of dollars to it.

Once again, the March budget season has arrived, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has engineered another draconian fiscal vision for the House Republicans. The plan would radically remake Medicare, decimate Medicaid, grant a huge tax cut to the wealthy, and slash support for the poor, investments, and civic infrastructure.

Ryan and his cohorts justify these plans by insisting that America faces a “debt crisis,” that the deficits we’re currently running are too high, and that we must act immediately to fix these problems. Centrists and other “serious” pundits and lawmakers throughout Washington have bought this argument, if not all the details of Ryan’s specific solution, and they’ve scoffed at President Obama’s insistence that we don’t actually face a looming debt crisis. Here are the reasons Obama’s right, and they’re all wrong:

1. We don’t ever have to actually eliminate the debt: The United States ran up a huge debt burden in World War II. More importantly, in raw dollar terms, we never repaid that debt. We simply grew the economy so that the size of the debt fell in comparison. That’s what’s happening in graphs where the debt burden drops in the post-war years. That burden is measured as a ratio of debt-to-GDP, and in ratios the denominator matters as much as the numerator.

2. The budget doesn’t actually have to balance to reduce it: If we can keep deficits under a certain threshold every year, then economic growth will overtake it, meaning our debt-to-GDP ratio will either stay the same or even drop. For the immediate future, the economy looks set to grow by about 4 percent a year in nominal terms (that is, real growth plus inflation). If we can keep each year’s deficit to 4 percent or less of public debt already held, debt-to-GDP will stabilize. America can, in fact, run deficits in perpetuity.

3. The debt is already as balanced as it needs to be: Federal spending involves a host of programs called “stabilizers” — spending that automatically kicks in when the economy tanks, without any acts on the part of lawmakers, boosting GDP growth and helping Americans who have lost their jobs. These include unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and many others. Tax revenues also naturally fall as unemployment rises.

The Congressional Budget office just released a report that stabilizers will add $422 billion to the deficit in 2013. That leaves $423 billion — out of the estimated $845 billion deficit for the year — that isn’t due to the automatic stabilizers. Publicly held U.S. debt is currently around $11.5 trillion, and $423 is less than 4 percent of that.

Take out the stabilizers, and the deficit is within the window necessary to stabilize the debt. And all we have to do to unwind the stabilizers is get the economy firing on all cylinders again. This holds true for about the next decade, before growth in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid finally begin to slowly overtake it. The country still has problems, but it has lots of time to sort them out.

4. The “debt crisis” is not a certainty: Paul Ryan may talk as if it is, but it’s merely a projection — one possible result if the CBO’s guesswork about the future proves accurate. The Center for American Progress recently dove into CBO’s methodology, and found that the projections build in a host of sometimes-dramatic assumptions about Congress’ future spending and taxation choices, as well as other factors that could very well not come to pass.

Beyond trying to predict future Congress’ policy preferences, much of the future debt is based on projections that health care costs will continue growing at their previous trend. But the whole point of health care reform is to alter that trend by altering health care markets. Obamacare may already be doing this. CBO’s projections for Medicare spending over the next decade dropped by $500 billion between 2010 and 2013, simply because health care cost growth unexpectedly slowed.

In fact, if that slowdown becomes the new norm, Medicare spending will stay essentially flat as a share of the economy from here on out. That doesn’t show up in CBO’s long-term projections because their methodology uses cost growth over the last two decades to predict future trends. (See page 60.) It’s literally within the realm of reasonable possibility that the long-term debt problem is already solved — all without lawmakers having to cut a dime.

5. We don’t know how much debt actually causes crisis: Ryan and others often cite a finding that economic growth slows as debt-to-GDP reaches 90 percent. But there’s a big correlation-causation problem with this. Remember the denominator: slowing GDP, regardless of debt, could raise debt-to-GDP just as much as higher debt could. And the countries that fit with the 90 percent threshold prediction also present an apples-to-oranges problem when compared to America. Britain, Japan, and France — advanced democracies like ours, with their own currency — shouldered debt levels far in excess of 90 precent over extended periods of time in the past. No debt crisis arrived.

In conclusion: the “debt crisis” is a mere phantom — only one of many possible futures, and far from a certainty. The interest America is paying on its debt is currently lower than it was in the 1990s, despite a lower debt-to-GDP ratio then. When inflation is factored in, current real interest rates on our debt are negative. Financial markets are willing to pay us to borrow from them.

Meanwhile, every dollar we cut — nay, every dollar we fail to borrow — is a dollar that isn’t going to shore up the safety net, to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, or to support struggling Americans while their livelihoods remain on the line. That we’re passing on this opportunity to repair our country, much less even considering the monstrosity that is the Ryan budget, really is absurd.

Earlier this week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a budget proposal that would undermine America’s long-term economic growth and competitiveness by slashing critical investments in education, science and technology, and infrastructure. If Ryan’s budget is an example of what not to do, the budget (PDF) proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a great example of a budget that invests in America’s future growth and global competitiveness. Instead of making deep cuts to education and training, scientific research, and transportation infrastructure, the CPC “Back to Work” budget would actually boost our investments in these key areas.

As my colleague Adam Hersh and I have written, public investments in things like roads, schools, and new scientific research are essential for job creation and economic growth because they improve productivity and earnings, create efficient and low-cost transportation and energy system, and lead to groundbreaking technological innovations. Ideally, the amount we spend per capita on these investments should increase over time – at a minimum, investments should keep up with inflation and population growth.

Let’s take a look at how the two budgets treat three key areas of investment: research and development for science and technology; transportation infrastructure; and education and training:

In the past decade, each year we spent on average of $95 per capita on science and technology research. While Ryan’s budget would cut that number down to $81, the CPC budget would have us boost our investment to $106 per capita. This is especially important because federal investments in science and technology have been declining since the 1970s.

When it comes to investments in transportation infrastructure, Ryan’s budget would bring our spending down to $227 per person compared to the $284 we spent per person each year from 2004-2013. The CPC budget proposes to make big investments in job creation by putting Americans to work repairing our decrepit roads and bridges – boosting spending to $559 per person each year. These investments are desperately needed – according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, our infrastructure report card grade is a “D.”

On education and workforce development, Ryan would slash spending to just $247 per person, compared with the $348 per person we spent annually over the past decade. Again, the CPC budget thinks long term and increases our investment to $497, ensuring that more Americans are able to gain the skills they need to get good jobs. These investments are crucial if we want to keep up with our international competitors. Consider: According to a CAP analysis, In 2007 China surpassed the United States in their annual number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, graduates. And by 2030 China will have more college graduates than the entire U.S. workforce.

We already know that the Ryan budget would hinder our economic recovery in the short term. What’s just as bad is that it would damage our ability to innovate and compete globally for years to come. The CPC budget proposal avoids this mistake, and continues to make the investments that economists agree are necessary to create long-term growth.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Ayres, a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Over the last year, Republicans in Congress have criticized President Obama and Senate Democrats for ignoring the budget ideals reached by former Sens. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles that cut spending, reformed entitlements, and raised tax revenues. Now that Senate Democrats have introduced a budget that reaches top-line numbers similar to those in Simpson-Bowles, however, Republicans are still claiming that it raises too much revenue.

In fact, the Senate Democratic budget cuts spending to 21.8 percent of GDP, the same level reached by Simpson and Bowles. But it also raises revenue to just 19.4 percent of GDP, much less than the Simpson-Bowles plan, as Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden shows in this chart:

That’s not to say Simpson-Bowles is the ideal budget the American economy needs or that the Senate Democratic budget is perfect or complete. It still has details to fill in, most notably on tax reform. But even though the budget cuts domestic discretionary spending, it doesn’t immediately slash spending to levels that the American government hasn’t seen in more than half a century, as Ryan’s does. And unlike Simpson-Bowles, it protects entitlement programs from drastic changes and includes a modest amount of funding for stimulus measures to help boost the economic recovery.

But for all the wrangling about compromise in Washington, particularly among media types, it’s clear that while Ryan produced a budget based on Republican fantasies, Senate Democrats chose a plan that is in line with the top-line numbers contained in other moderate, bipartisan proposals.

Over at Investors.com, Jed Graham ran the numbers on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) new budget for the House GOP, and found that by 2023, it would drive all government spending that isn’t either Social Security or interest on the debt to its lowest level since 1948. On every other occasion in the last 60 years that this category of spending dipped that low, unemployment was never over 4.5 percent — it’s currently at 7.7 percent.

Graham found, “the entirety of federal spending outside of Social Security and interest on the debt (16.4 percent of GDP in 2012) would shrink to 11.2 percent of GDP” by 2023, “a level not seen since 1948.” In fact, the situation is even worse, since in 1948 this spending did not yet include “ObamaCare, Medicare, Medicaid, NASA, the interstate highway system” or a host of other needed programs now in operation:

In fact, if Medicare is discounted as well as Social Security and interest payments, spending shrinks to 7.9 percent in 2023, the lowest levels for that slice since 1938.

This is tiresome and grossly irresponsible, but hardly surprising. Ryan’s previous budget would’ve shoved non-defense discretionary spending — which includes most of the government’s investments in economic growth, veterans’ health care, food safety, drug safety, consumer product safety, federal law enforcement, and more — to 2.1 percent of GDP. Since 1962, the first year for which we have comprehensive data, non-defense discretionary spending has never dropped below 3.2 percent of spending.

Nonetheless, Ryan’s latest budget once again aims for the 2.1 percent mark by 2023, leading Michael Linden at the Center for American Progress to dismiss it as fantasy. “[I]t’s is far easier to ‘cut’ the nebulous category called ‘nondefense discretionary’ than it is to cut actual programs, benefits, and protections that the public knows and likes,” Linden writes. “But in fact, for these kinds of cuts to actually come to pass, Congress — now and in the future — will have to get specific. And if they decide that they can’t, in reality, reduce these things to levels unheard of in generations, then Rep. Ryan’s claim to a balanced budget falls apart.”

Sure enough, American voters only support cutting spending when it’s vaguely referred to as “spending.” Name specific programs, and public support for cutting them utterly collapses.

As Congressional Republicans again rally around Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget and its goal of eliminating the deficit in ten years, many are using an old talking point. They claim that the federal government should model itself on the families and businesses and stop spending more money than it takes in. But a ThinkProgress examination of recent personal financial disclosure filings reveals that many of the same lawmakers who are urging the nation to balance its books are themselves in debt and have taken out personal and/or business loans.

Government is nothing like a business and cannot be run as one — its aim is to protect its citizens, not to turn a profit. Businesses and individuals often borrow in the short term to make investments for the long term — mortgages, lines of credits, and other sorts of loans are facts of life for millions of Americans and businesses of all sizes. Start-up businesses rarely break even for the first several years and few people can afford to buy their first home outright or pay for their kids to go to college out of pocket.

Still, many politicians who advocate for cuts to vital programs and a dangerous Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution use the argument that government needs to live with in its means because everyone else does — but have debt of their own. These hypocrites include:

• House Budget Committee Member Tom Rice (R-SC): Wrote: “At a time when hardworking American families are living off of a budget, the federal government should be no different. My colleagues and I believe it is time for America to change course and get back on a path of prosperity. This begins with a balanced budget plan.” Reported five mortgages totaling over $4 million.
• House Budget Committee Member Diane Black (R-TN): Wrote: “The state of Tennessee balances its budget, American families and businesses balance their budgets and so should the federal government,” and “Balancing the budget is not extreme; it is what American families across this country do on a regular basis.” Reported four mortgages on three properties, totaling more than $3 million.
• House Budget Committee Member Roger Williams (R-TX): Said Wednesday: “We have to have a balanced budget. I have to balance my budget. Everybody in America has to balance their family’s budget or their business’ budget, not every ten years, not even every single year, but every single day.” Reported more than $2.5 million in business debts.
• House Budget Committee Member Scott Rigell (R-VA): Boasted that he voted for a balanced budget amendment because: “I know that American families do what they have to do to live within their means; and so too should the government.” Reported $1.5 million in lines of credit, a $500,000-plus mortgage, and over $10,000 in credit card debt.

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