In Ohio and across our nation, low-income and middle-class Americans would sacrifice for the greater benefit of the wealthiest under the Romney-Ryan plan for the economy, taxes, and health care.
The price tag includes:
- Middle-class Ohioans would pay more in taxes while millionaires pay less. Millionaires in the state would receive an additional $87,000 in tax breaks under the tax plans of Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan while middle-class families would pay $1,900 more in health care taxes and $1,066 more in taxes on their mortgages.
- Jobs would decline across Ohio. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan plan to provide extra tax incentives for corporations to outsource jobs and are pushing policy proposals to cripple the clean energy industry, jeopardizing 125,000 jobs across the state.
- Drastic cuts to federal spending would shrink Ohio's middle class. The state stands to lose more than $106 billion in federal funding from 2013 through 2022, an average of more than $10 billion a year, from cuts to schools, law enforcement, highway repairs, job-training programs and more. These cuts would fall predominantly on middle-class and low-income families, especially cuts to education programs that would result in nearly $100 million in reduced federal support for education in the state in 2013 and 2014 alone.
- Seniors in Ohio would lose health care benefits and pay more. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan would force seniors in the state to pay at least $660 more for their prescription drugs each year. At the same time, the Romney-Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a voucher would cost current seniors at least $11,000 more out of pocket.
- Women in Ohio would pay more for health care but receive less bang for their buck. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan would once again allow insurance companies to charge women more than men while taking away preventive care from at least 1.9 million women in the state.
- Young adults in Ohio would lose access to their families' health insurance. Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan promise to dismantle Obamacare, which would directly result in 97,000 young adults in Ohio losing the insurance they have today due to the Affordable Care Act.
The Romney-Ryan plan asks the vast majority of Americans to pay more, and then spends this revenue not on balancing the budget but rather on more tax breaks for the richest Americans. Gov. Romney's top direct donor would receive over $2 billion in direct tax benefits from under the Romney-Ryan plan, while a typical police officer in Columbus makes a little over $60,000 a year would see their taxes increase by $1,260. These lopsided priorities are not a coincidence or a cruel joke. They are the logical extension of a trickle-down economic policy that failed under President George W. Bush but would be revived by Gov. Romney and Rep. Ryan.
President Obama and Vice President Biden, in contrast, believe that economic growth comes from a strong middle class, rather than being passed down from the wealthiest. They have passed and seek greater investments in education, job-training, infrastructure development, and scientific research and development to boost our nation's long-term economic competiveness, coupled with targeted cuts in government spending and the end of the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to bring the federal budget deficit under control.
