Ryan Answers His Critics

In an interview, Time magazine’s Jay Newton-Small presses Paul Ryan on some criticism his budget has received from the left. For example, The New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait writes that the “Achilles Heel” of Ryan’s plan is that it cuts Medicare for future beneficiaries in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Here’s Ryan’s response:

Some liberal bloggers have been saying that your plan would shift the tax burden off of the rich.

There’s no way of knowing that until you actually see the tax bill that [Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave] Camp would write. First of all, the commission basically did the same thing and they argue that it’s distributionally neutral. So we could just do the commission framework and it’d be distributionally neutral. You’ve got to remember that the high-income earners are the people who enjoy the deductions. People who itemize their tax returns are the people in the top two tax brackets. You take away that, you’re raising their taxes. You lower the rates in exchange and it’s a wash, depending on how much you do in broadening and lowering. So, that’s unknown. Ways and Means will have to fill in those details. But this framework could still clearly result in a distributionally neutral tax system.