Regarding the emerging House Progressive Caucus alternative to Chairman Ryan’s budget proposal, Ezra Klein writes:

On first glance, it might rely a bit too heavily on taxes, but then, Ryan’s plan relies much too heavily on spending cuts. And from a political-economy perspective, it’s much more courageous to propose taxes on the rich and powerful than spending cuts on the poor and disabled.

One potential complication is that Ryan’s plan implies deep cuts for many middle class Medicare beneficiaries. Moreover, the number of Americans who self-identify as disabled has grown markedly in recent decades, even as workplaces have grown much safer. A large number of American households include at least one disabled individual. (This is true of someone very close to me, for example.)

Moreover, spending on services for the disabled has increased dramatically, and this in turn has created a large and vocal constituency of for-profit firms and public sector workers who meet these needs. Reducing expenditures directed at the middle class and the disabled might improve organizational discipline in a way that benefits everyone. But rest assured, there will be significant political resistance.

Imagine, in contrast, that we promised to continue on more or less the current spending trajectory, thus sparing for-profit firms that receive publics funds and public sector organizations from imposing organizational discipline, i.e., various cost-cutting measures aimed at boosting productivity, but that we’d make a small minority of very rich people pay the difference. My guess is that rich people would spend lots of money to resist this effort. But of course people drawing salaries from tax dollars would have a pretty strong incentive to spend some of their salaries to combat these efforts. And this large and growing constituency might also have numbers on its side, which counts for a lot in political struggles.

That’s at least one way to look at the landscape.