Deja voodoo.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan - Viewpoint essay

So much fanfare, so little fare. And once you see it without the dazzling neon lights rippling across it, you won't be a fan. Unless you're a millionaire corporate executive.

But, as we say in Texas, never sign nothing by neon.

"It" is the highly ballyhooed Republican budget proposal. It was unleashed on us in a high-voltage

press conference by Paul Ryan, the GOP's wonky ideologue who now chairs the House budget committee. Ryan dubbed his plan--ta-ta-tee-dah--"Path to Prosperity." And indeed it is--but prosperity for whom? That is the core question that should be asked about all prosperity claims.

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Ryan, House Speaker John Boehner, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor like to portray themselves as "the Three Budgeteers." Decrying deficits, they gallop through Congress with swords flashing, severing billions--nay, trillions!--from the national budget.

Medicare for seniors: Behead it!

Food stamps for the poor: Whack them!

Environmental protections: Eviscerate them!

Consumer protection agency: Kill it!

Ryan's budgetary offerings turn out to be deja voodoo all over again. Practically all of the slash and burn rampage by the Three Budgeteers comes at the expense of America's middle class and the poor. For corporate powers and wealthy elites, however, the dynamic trio offers more government gimmies, including a one-third cut in their tax rates.

The $4 trillion in budget cuts in Ryan's proposal are savage.

Take Medicare--which Ryan does. He would defund and privatize this effective, efficient, and wildly popular program of universal health care for seniors, replacing it with insurance vouchers that put seniors at the mercy of profiteering health care vultures. The vouchers would be worth about a third of what Medicare covers, so goodbye and good luck, old folks.

But health care coverage is not all that Ryan's Republican "prosperity" plan cuts. The rich and corporations--poor babies--need another break, and the chairman delivers. Rather than paying a 35 percent tax rate on their fabulous incomes, Ryan generously cuts their...