GOP Budget Architect Ryan Represents Wisconsin’s Three Highest Unemployed Cities

MADISON, Wis. — Despite representing the three cities in Wisconsin with the highest unemployment rates, Rep. Paul Ryan has offered a GOP

Madison budget plan to continue the reckless Bush economic policies of tax cuts for the rich, privatization and ignoring investment in American infrastructure.

“Paul Ryan represents the three cities with the state’s highest unemployment rates, but instead of offering solutions, he’s offering job-killing Bush policies,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “Has Paul Ryan been in Beloit, Racine and Janesville in the past year?”

According to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the three cities with the highest unemployment rates in Wisconsin are in Ryan’s First Congressional District. This includes Beloit, 16.9 percent; Racine, 15.6 percent and Janesville, 14.6 percent.

Central to Ryan’s budget is making permanent the Bush tax cuts that unfairly benefit the top one percent of income earners, as well as additional corporate tax cuts and repealing the federal stimulus package that is expected to create between three and four million jobs.

Ryan proposes to pay for these endless tax cuts for the wealthy by freezing spending for five years across the board for domestic programs that benefit the middle class, seniors low-income households.

Five key components of the Ryan plan are:

• Cutting the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 25 percent
• Slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent
• Suspending the capital gains tax
• Privatizing Medicare, the country’s most successful government program
• Freezing for five years all non-defense and veterans’ health care spending

• Under this plan, according to the Center for Justice, one-third of taxpayers, most of them from middle and low-income families, would pay more in taxes under Ryan’s plan than President Obama’s budget. Ryan also restores an average of $75,000 in tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers, the same taxpayers who received the majority of tax breaks under the Bush tax cuts, which Ryan would make permanent.

  “Paul Ryan’s plan would be a disaster,” said Ross. “Ask the jobless workers of Beloit, Racine and Janesville – they’ve already seen the results.”