 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) By Matt O'Brien What if I told you that a Republican wanted to cut taxes, increase defense spending, slowly slash Medicaid, leave Social Security and Medicare untouched for now, and gut the rest of the government? You'd probably say that you'd heard enough about Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan's budget, and it was time to talk about President Trump's instead. But we are. While he's only outlined it in the broadest possible strokes, the basics of Trump's budget wouldn't be out of place in, say, a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation. Which is to say that the idea that Trump and Ryan are set up for a "striking clash," as the New York Times put it, over taxes and spending is mostly wrong. Their budget priorities might not be entirely simpatico, but their differences aren't irreconcilable either. They're staying together for the tax cuts. About those. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Trump's campaign proposal would amount to a $6.2 trillion tax cut over the next decade, of which 47.3 percent would go to the top 1 percent of households. Ryan's, meanwhile, would be a $3.1 trillion tax cut, of which 99.6 percent would go to the top 1 percent. So they agree that the rich should get about a $3 trillion tax cut, but disagree whether anyone else should get anything else. This is not the stuff of bitter ideological disputes. They're going to cut the top tax rate, and everything else, as far as they're concerned, is just a detail. Read the rest on Wonkblog.
Chart of the day While the government has spent billions of dollars a year to restrict the supply of heroin, the price has only continued to fall. Christopher Ingraham has more. |
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