The budget proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

There is another budget in Congress besides the unreal idiocy offered by the libertarian/Republican Ryan. It's the budget offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Paul Krugman describes the budget. He carefully points out how it is a proposal that gives the numbers showing how it will work, unlike Ryan's magic- and lie-based fantasy budget.

The CPC plan essentially balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall mainly on higher incomes, although not just on the top 2%: super-brackets for very high incomes, elimination of deductions, taxation of capital income as ordinary income, and — the part that would be most controversial — raising the cap on payroll taxes.

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Although I couldn’t find share of GDP in the working paper, it’s right there on the home page. Revenues are 22.3 percent of GDP in 2021. That’s 3 points higher than what Ryan claims his plan would produce, although he hasn’t explained how he’s going to make up for those $3 trillion in tax cuts for the rich.

This would be a record level of revenue for the peacetime federal government, but it would still leave the overall tax take, including state and local, far below levels in most other advanced countries. And the point is that this would balance the budget without the savage cuts assumed in the Republican plan, or even the still painful cuts in the Obama plan. We supposedly face a fiscal crisis; why shouldn’t significant tax hikes be part of the response?

Unlike the Ryan budget proposal, the progressive budget actually reduces the deficit, and it does so without smoke, fantasy and mirrors.

This budget exposes the fact that Ryan's presentation is not designed to reduce the deficit. It is intended to change the basic relationship of government with the American people, setting the model back to the days of the American robber barons.

The American MSM is not going to look at this budget proposal. It doesn't fit with the small-town atmosphere of the people in Washington,D.C. who style themselves as the "normal Americans" who should rule this country.

Ryan's Medicare proposal is dead already. Good riddance.

Does anyone really think that Paul Ryan's Vouchers-for-Medicare plan can work? Ask the insurance industry which companies want to offer health insurance to the over age 65 demographic. This is from Benjy Sarlin at Talking Points Memo.

Unlike the Affordable Care Act, which mandated that millions of young and healthy Americans purchase insurance with government subsidies, the Paul Ryan plan would instead bring the oldest, sickest, and least profitable demographic to the table. And with the CBO projecting that the average senior would be on the hook for over two-thirds of their health care costs within just 10 years of the plan's adoption -- a proportion that is projected to worsen in the long run --- the government subsidies backing them up may not bring in enough profitable customers to make things worthwhile.

"If reimbursement rates are too low to provide basic benefits, they'll tell the government, 'You do it,'" one insurance lobbyist told TPM. "I don't think they can require they lose money, they'd just pull out."

Dan Boston, a veteran lobbyist for health care providers and co-owner of Health Policy Source, said in an interview with TPM that he was taking a "wait and see" approach on the GOP budget before judging its value. (The American Hospital Association opposes the plan). But he cautioned that a major concern would be whether hospitals and private insurers would be left on the hook for low-income seniors eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, who could run up significant costs with little hope of ever paying them off.

"I think everyone is going to be looking at the viability of the funding," he said.

Any so-called insurance company that tried to offer policies to the Medicare demographic would not last two years.

Ryan's plan is a perfect example of the crap that Republicans and much of the MSM call thoughtful and innovative. Ann Rand would have loved this stuff.

[Cross-posted at Social Security & Medicare Notes.]