Updating Ryan

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We’ve updated our report showing that the bulk of cuts in House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would come in programs for lower-income Americans to reflect the changes he made to the budget before it went to the House floor.

After the House Budget Committee approved the Ryan plan (but before it came to the House floor), Chairman Ryan added $197 billion in cuts in order to offset an overestimate of interest savings.  (See here for a brief explanation.)  This raised the total program cuts in the plan from $4.3 trillion to $4.5 trillion.  Cuts in low-income programs appear likely to account for at least $2.9 trillion — or nearly two-thirds — of this total amount, as our revised graph shows.