Richard Schwab Writes

What's the best choice for America?

The budget, created by U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin, has been endorsed by the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney has embrassed the Ryan plan, calling it "marvelous." The Ryan Romney budget is now the Republican 2012 election platform and economic program.

It's on the table. The Ryan Romney Republican plan would change the role of government in our society.

The plan withdraws the government from assisting those with low incomes and those facing difficult times. The plan is an effort to renegotiate the entire social and economic edifice of America.

The Ryan Romney Republican plan is terrible for everyone except the very wealthy, corporations, and the Department of Defense.

What's in the Ryan Romney Republican plan?

• Medicare is cut by $205 billion. The plan offers subsidies ("premium support") for seniors to buy their own private health insurance.

• Slashes 700 billion from Medicaid (cuts $1.7 trillion over the next decade) and reduces the program by 75% by 2050.

• 17 million people would lose Medicare and CHIP coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.

• Pell Grants are reduced by more than $1000. for nearly 10 million students.

• Cuts education funding for individuals with disabilities.

• Kicks 60,000 low-income children out of Head Start (200,000 out each year over the next decade.)

• 2 million women, infants, and children would be cut from WIC programs that give them access to healthy food.

• Tax rates are set at 10% and 25%. As a result, those making less than $100,000. pay a higher effective tax rate; those making a million receive a $150,000. tax cut.

• Federal work force cut 10% and a pay freeze through 2015.

• Debilitating cuts for law enforcement, border patrol, scientific and medical research, food safety, environmental protection, federal highways, national parks, weather monitoring, education, and the FAA.

• The Congressional Budget Office concluded the plan doesn't balance the federal budget.

The Ryan Romney Republican plan has been denounced and described as "Social Darwinism."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has decried the plan. In a letter to Ryan, they said don't slash the safety net, particularly if you're doing so to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. "We urge you to draw a circle of protection around resources that serve those in greatest need ... even though they do not have powerful advocates or great influence."

Ryan has charged that aid programs encourage people to sponge off the government. "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls people into complacency and dependence."

Here's your choice America:

Guaranteed health care benefits for seniors, or tax breaks for the wealthy?

Food for poor children, or no taxes on offshore multinational corporate profits?

Increases in defense spending, or health care for 48 million Americans?

We have a pretty good idea of what President Obama has in mind. Now it's crystal clear what the other side is up to.

This is why our votes on November 6, 2012 matter so much.

Richard O. Schwab was formerly associate head of school, and middle school head, Cincinnati Country Day School. He is currently neighborhood team leader, Glendale Organizing For America Community Team (www.gofact.blogspot.com)

Richard Schwab Writes

Prosperous Middle Class is Essential

Who shops at small businesses?

Who buys millions of products everyday?

Who keeps our free market economy rolling?

The answer: American middle-class consumers.

In an economy where consumer spending is nearly two-thirds of the nation's GDP, it is the middle-class consumers who are the true job creators. Real job growth stems mainly from the actions of the average American consumer. Ultimately, it is the everyday consumers who create the economic environment for job growth.

An entrepreneur or venture capitalist can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people, but if no one can afford to buy the products for sale, the business will fail and all the jobs will evaporate.

Henry Ford paid his auto workers higher than normal wages. Why? Because he wanted them to be able to buy his cars. Henry Ford understood that his assembly line consumers had the power to set in motion a cycle that would allow his company to survive, thrive and hire additional workers.

Our current tax policies are upside down. When Republican lawmakers defend a system in which the lion's share of benefits accrue to the richest, all in the name of protecting the job creators, all that happens is the rich get richer.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Where are the jobs? The rich don't magically create jobs. They don't hire additional workers simply because they have more money to spend. They will expand and hire if they know there are consumers out there who can afford to buy their products.

The shrinking middle-class needs a break. Putting purchasing power back in their hands is the surest way to get our consumer-driven economy gaining more momentum.

Since 1980, the share of the nation's income for the wealthiest top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent.

At the same time effect tax rates on the wealthiest fell to 16.6 percent in 2007- the lowest they've been in decades.

If average American families still received the same share of income they earned in the 1980s, they would have an astounding $13,000 a year more in their pockets. It is worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

It makes no sense to have a trillion dollars in annual tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans offset by cuts to public jobs and programs that help build and strengthen our middle-class.

Let's protect the actual job creators.

It makes sense to increase taxes on those who make millions so we don't have to gut programs or eliminate jobs that middle-class Americans desperately need.

This isn't about class-warfare or income redistribution. This is about strengthening our middle-class, the true job creators, and the economy.

Richard O. Schwab was formerly associate head of school, and middle school head, Cincinnati Country Day School. He is currently neighborhood team leader, Glendale Organizing For America Community Team (www.gofact.blogspot.com)