OMB Director: 'It Would be Difficult to Overstate Radicalism' of Ryan's Cuts

The acting director of the Office of Management and Budget slammed House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) FY 2013 proposal for giving millionaires a $150,000 “tax cut” and “ending Medicare as we know it.”

“While many of the proposals require more analysis, one thing is absolutely clear: this budget does not ask all Americans to do their share to get our fiscal house in order and create an economy that is built to last,” Jeff Zients wrote on the White House blog today.

Ryan’s budget proposal simplifies the tax code by cutting the current six income brackets down to two, with 10 percent and 25 percent rates.

But Zients decided to focus on Ryan’s cuts in non-defense discretionary spending, which are $5.3 trillion beyond President Obama’s plan.

“When it comes to annual, non-defense spending, the House Budget Resolution is not about cutting fat,” Zients charged. “It is cutting deep into the muscle that America needs to compete and win in the 21^st century.”

The OMB director said “it would be difficult to overstate the radicalism of the domestic cuts” proposed by Ryan.

He claimed that 9.6 million students would lose Pell Grant money, clean energy programs would be cut by 19 percent thus “derailing efforts to put a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” research to fight Alzheimer’s and cancer would be cut, 200,000 kids would be cut from Head Start in 2014, and 1.8 women and children would be cut from the WIC food aid program.

“The resolution would also make it extraordinarily difficult for government to do the basic business that people rightly expect of it,” Zients continued, charging that some air traffic control services would be eliminated and fewer federal agents would let crime run rampant.

“Keep in mind: cuts of this magnitude are needed in order to give the few Americans who make more than $1 million a year an average tax cut of at least $150,000,” Zients wrote.