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Five Brookings participants were involved, including Henry Aaron, Alice Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici.
He and Rivlin also co-chair a Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). In 2010, its budget slashing program was called "Restoring America's Future." Implementation would destroy it for millions greatly harmed or entirely left out by their proposals.
They include:
- indexing Social Security benefits to life expectancy to reduce them as longevity increases;
- eliminating annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs); bogusly they claim inflation is overstated; in fact, it way exceeds official numbers, especially medical expenses placing enormous burdens on recipients, including retirees dependent on help;
- instituting a one-year payroll tax holiday for workers and employers to save $650 billion; doing so, in fact, is hugely destructive by draining revenues needed for entitlements;
- sharply cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits by raising premiums, co-pays, and outpatient fees; also establishing privately owned health insurance exchanges to compete with traditional Medicare;
- by 2018, cutting Medicaid by the amount it exceeds GDP growth so needy recipients get less en route to perhaps nothing;
- shielding insurers and drug giants from malpractice suits by making it harder to file them; then capping non-economic and punitive damage awards by adjudicating claims in "specialized malpractice courts;" they'll, of course, favor providers over consumers;
- simplifying the tax code to two brackets (15 and 27%), favoring the rich; regressively cutting the top personal and corporate tax rate from 35% to 27%;
- eliminating home mortgage and most other deductions and credits;
- taxing employer provided health insurance;
- instituting a 6.5% national sales tax, hitting ordinary people hardest; and
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