To the editor:

Want to know what Republican class warfare on the working and middle classes would look like — the effect on Social Security, Medicare, existing health care, who pays taxes, the budget deficit, the national debt? Read on.

The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)’s Paul N. Van de Water have separately analyzed U. S. Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.’s) A Roadmap for America’s Future — introduced by Mr. Ryan in the U. S. House of Representatives as H. R. 4529.

Mr. Ryan is the U. S. House Republicans’ budgetary guru.

What would Mr. Ryan’s Roadmap (H. R. 4529) do?

Mr. Van de Water’s Oct. 20 article, “Ryan plan makes deep cuts in Social Security” (http:www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3308&emailView=1), makes these points.

If enacted, Mr. Ryan’s plan would:

1. Radically shift resources from the middle class to the wealthiest (“..[.It would provide] the largest tax cuts in history for the wealthy…”),

2. “…Raise taxes on the middle class…”,

3.  “…[End] guaranteed Medicare benefits…”,

4. “…[Partially privatize] Social Security…” for upper income Americans, at the same time requiring Social Security to make up for any shortfall produced by their investing in the stock market (remember President George W. Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security, which went nowhere, especially after the stock market crashed in 2007-2008.),

5. “…[Make] deep cuts in guaranteed Social Security benefits…” and

6. Although Mr. Ryan makes noises about reducing budget deficits and halting the growth in the national debt, his plan, A Roadmap for America’s Future provides “…very large revenue losses relative to current policies. The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, very costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households; eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest; and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. As a result, despite steep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs, the Roadmap would allow the federal debt to continue growing for decades to come.”

Now that’s class warfare by the Republicans, with a vengeance.

That modifies years ago U. S. Sen. Russell Long’s quote of the old doggerel, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the feller behind the tree.”

In Mr. Ryan’s rewrite of the American future, “you and me” are the extremely rich.

The “feller behind the tree” is the rest of us.

All of this reminds me of two things:

A.  Many Republicans, many congressional Republicans, many Republican candidates this year (Sharron Angle, of Nevada, Joe Miller, of Alaska, Rand Paul, of Kentucky, etc.) remain unreconciled to the existence of Social Security (75 years old), Medicare (45 years old) and a host of other legislation that has benefited and provided a safety net for workers and the middle class.

Some Republicans running this year are opposed to the existence of minimum wage and unemployment insurance benefits laws.

B.  In the mid-1970s, Elwood H. Schneider Sr., a Kalamazoo stockbroker and  next-door neighbor on Clovelly Road, Kalamazoo, to WKZO Radio and TV and Detroit Tigers owner John Fetzer, said at an Oceana County “happy hour” (cocktail hour) one summer weekend that his clients weren’t interested in a six-percent rate of return, or even 12 percent.

Mr. Schneider said, “They don’t want to pay any taxes.”

Banana republics, where the super rich are few and the small middle class and the poor are many, are highly unstable places.

Does America really want to go there?

Even the viciously anti-union Henry Ford Sr., saw the point in paying his workers enough so that they could buy the product they made.

Working and middle class families should know how far Republicans want to go.

With that knowledge, would rational and practical voters want to go along? Not likely.

Burke H. Webb

Marcellus