In approving (235-193) House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposed budget resolution. The spending blueprint, if enacted, would turn Medicare into a voucher program and drastically cut Medicaid funding as a means to cutting income tax rates for upper-income households (from 35 percent to 25 percent). Although the plan has no chance of becoming law, it does illustrate the Republican-controlled House's priorities - namely tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for low-income programs and seniors.

The continuing resolution agreement to fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, which was reached by President Obama, Senate Democrats, and House Republicans, is extremely disappointing. At a time when unemployment is close to nine percent, 23 million Americans are either underemployed or unemployed, and economic growth sputters, policymakers have decided that the most pressing problem facing the nation is the budget deficit. Rather than making adjustments where the pain will be felt the least, their solution is to cut nutrition, housing, and education spending, let tax cheats off the hook, and spend more money on an already bloated defense budget.

Last Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for April. If you've been keeping an eye on this blog, you'd know that the $830 billion deficit Uncle Sam has racked up over the first six months of fiscal year (FY) 2011 is unsurprising and isn't really newsworthy. Of course, that's not the way it's likely to play out in the media or on Capitol Hill.

Released Tuesday morning amid great fanfare, Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget proposal is turning out to be a grab bag of right-wing economic crankery. In fact, that's too nice: the proposal is flat out awful. And when I say "awful," I don't just mean evisceration-of-two-very-popular-social-safety-net-programs or two-thirds-of-proposed-spending-cuts-from-low-income-programs awful, but tax-hikes-on-middle-and-low-income-folks-combined-with-tax-cuts-for-the-rich awful.