It has now occurred to me, based on Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, that Republicans in Congress don’t care about garnering absolute wealth for themselves.
They just want relative wealth — in other words, all they really want is to be better off than the rest of us. They’ll even sacrifice some of their own potential earnings to do that.
It seems clear that the Ryan budget will only hurt the economy as a whole, and thus its passage would probably prevent even the richest Republicans from amassing the greatest possible wealth for themselves.
The Ryan budget would reduce domestic programs “to the lowest levels since modern government accounting,” according to The New York Times. It would cut health care coverage and subsidies under Obamacare, and it would slash Medicaid, food stamps, education, and farm programs. Will this help the economy? I don’t think so, because it will lower the spending capacity of millions of Americans.
Republican policies have clearly hurt the middle class and have prolonged the recession. While the rich have gotten richer, the more important accomplishment apparently is that most of us are worse off as a result. The Ryan budget “is now viewed as something that identifies who we are,” says Rep. Peter Roskam, a Republican House member from Illinois.
Clearly, they are a group that is looking out for the rest of us, not just themselves.
