With each passing day I live as a witness to the political takeover by modern American conservatives, I can’t help but notice the growing similarities between our nation and the dystopic society Ayn Rand dreamed of in her novel “Atlas Shrugged.”
The novel is based upon a purely capitalistic society where heroic capitalists resist all government taxation and regulations in a struggle to keep the “moochers” from trying to steal their totally deserved wealth.
Sound familiar?
Think Reaganomics, Bush tax cuts or Goldman Sachs.
Put these three things in a pot, douse them with gasoline and toss a match in the pile, and you get the 2012 United States federal budget authored by the Chairman of the House Budget Committee Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Congressman Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity Budget” is not only fiscally irresponsible, but it is blatantly tilted against the lower and middle classes in an inconceivably cruel way.
The Ryan budget is class warfare in its most egregious form. It’s an attack on workers, seniors and our nation’s most vulnerable for the sole purpose of transferring even more money to wealthy individuals and corporations.
For one thing, Ryan’s savings all come from spending cuts, primarily from safety net programs benefiting the poor.
Ryan would cut $770 billion over 10 years from Medicaid, $1.6 trillion from the Obama health care legislation and $1.9 trillion from a category simply labeled “other mandatory.”
Pressured to explain this unclear category, Ryan declared that the majority of the “other mandatory” consists of cuts to welfare, federal employee pensions, food stamps and support for farmers.
Why doesn’t he just label the category “social genocide”?
 
The budget also significantly cuts funding to college scholarships, medical research and national parks.
In total, Ryan would reduce federal spending by $4 trillion over the next decade, stripping necessary resources from the lower class and unemployed.
The most insidious component of Ryan’s budget is the sheer gall with which he blows all of the money saved from spending cuts to allot huge tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
As estimated by the Nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, $4.6 trillion in tax revenue will be lost with the draconian tax reduction for the wealthy described in the plan.
Included in the Tax Center’s report is a more telling figure: The average member of the top 1 percent will receive a tax break of a cool $238,000 a year.
And because Ryan’s proposals call for far more tax breaks than spending cuts, the budget would actually be adding to the deficit, not reducing it.
But Ryan claims he would close enough tax loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion a year, causing a budget surplus.
 
So which loopholes does Ryan plan to close?
He hasn’t said. Nowhere in his report can these magical loopholes be found, nor has he made an announcement regarding any he intends to close.
Without this unspecified – and probably fictional – loophole scheme to raise money, Ryan and his fellow Republican henchmen are liars. They could care less about deficits. All this plan really accomplishes is making the rich, well, richer.
President Obama released a statement regarding the Ryan budget that perfectly describes the true aims of the proposals: “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”
Ryan’s budget will undoubtedly begin the manifestation of the dog-eat-dog, pure capitalistic society of “Atlas Shrugged” that conservatives in Congress lick their chops just thinking about.
In the eyes of Ryan, Rand and Republicans, we’re all just freeloaders trying to live off their wealth.
 
Jay Meyers is a 19-year-old economics freshman from Shreveport. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_jmeyers.
 
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Contact Jay Meyers at [email protected]