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The Ryan Sinkhole - NYTimes.com

The Ryan Sinkhole
By THOMAS B. EDSALL

Unlike the Republican platform, which has mostly been ignored outside of the abortion issue, the Paul Ryan budget is the core document of the 2012 campaign. It is the most explicit expression of the Republican agenda, endorsed by the party’s presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and backed by decisive majorities of House and Senate Republicans.

That much is known. What people have not been talking about enough is that the Ryan budget contains an $897 billion sinkhole: massive but unexplained cuts in such discretionary domestic programs as education, food and drug inspection, workplace safety, environmental protection and law enforcement.

The scope of the cuts – stunning in their breadth — is hidden. According to the House Budget Committee, of which Ryan is the chairman:

The federal budget is divided into approximately 20 categories known as budget functions. These functions include all spending for a given topic, regardless of the federal agency that oversees the individual federal program. Both the president’s budget, submitted annually, and Congress’ budget resolution, passed annually, comprise these approximately 20 functions.

Within the 20 “budget functions” lurks — at number 19 — “Function 920.” In a masterpiece of bureaucratic obscurantism, the explanation provided by budget committee reads as follows:

FUNCTION 920: ALLOWANCES

Function 920 represents a category called “allowances” that captures the budgetary effects of cross-cutting proposals or contingencies that impact multiple functions rather than one specific area of the budget. It also represents a place-holder category for any budgetary impacts that the Congressional Budget Office has yet to assign to a specific budget function. C.B.O. typically reassigns the budgetary effects of any legislation enacted within Function 920 once a new baseline update is released.

Paul Ryan t-shirt.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressPaul Ryan t-shirt.

The importance of the nearly $1 trillion in unexplained and unspecified cuts that Ryan and the Republican party are proposing, under the catch-all rubric of “Function 920: Allowances,” cannot be overestimated. These invisible cuts are crucial to the Republican claim that the Ryan budget proposal will drastically reduce the federal deficit (eliminating it entirely in the long run) and ultimately erase the national debt.

Ryan’s plan was passed 228-191 by the House on March 29, 2012, with no Democrats voting yes. On May 16, the Senate rejected the plan by a vote of 58-41. The vote among Senate Republicans was 41-4 in favor.