What hasn’t changed from last year, unfortunately, is the budget’s studious vagueness about the details of its proposed tax reform (it calls for lower rates and a broader base without itemizing which of the many popular deductions it wants capped or eliminated) and the absence of any replacement for a repealed Obamacare. The tax reform details are theoretically supposed to be filled in by the House Ways and Means Committee, but that didn’t happen last year and I’m not holding my breath; the absence of a “replace” in repeal-and-replace, meanwhile, seems to just reflect Ryan’s inability to rally his colleagues around his own vision for health care reform. There is, to be sure, a case for vagueness on some of these fronts. But by being specific about rate reductions and vague about how to pay for them, and by declining to offer anything substantial as an Obamacare alternative, the Ryan budget makes it easier for the Democrats to claim that this is just Republican politics-as-usual: Unfunded tax cuts for the rich, nothing on health care except cuts to Medicare, and deficit reduction on the backs of the poor.
(From Ross Douthat in the Times.)
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