No, Rep Paul Ryan’s Budget Proposal Is Not Brave
Prominent opinion writers have spent the last few days fawning over Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which would essentially abolish Medicare and Medicaid while lowering taxes on top earners, and many of them have deployed a litany of superlatives usually reserved for costumed superheroes. Commentators like David Brooks and Jacob Weisberg have described Ryan’s plan as “brave,” and “bold,” and the word “courageous” has been ubiquitous.
But the closer people look at Ryan’s plan, the clearer it becomes that the plan isn’t all that brave. Let’s take stock of all the recent revelations about it.
Ryan’s plan included a laughably implausible unemployment analysis from Heritage predicting it would bring unemployment down to 4 percent by 2015 and 2.8 percent by 2012 — an analysis Heritage then quitely retracted by attempting to disappear it from the internet. Ryan’s plan claims to save money while repealing the Affordable Care Act, even though the CBO has said repealing the ACA will increase the deficit. Ryan implied that his plan was supported by President Bill Clinton’s former OMB Director Alice Rivlin, even though it isn’t. It cuts taxes on top earners, when the easiest way to reduce the deficit is to let the Bush tax cuts expire.
Ryan’s misleading claims aren’t the only thing that isn’t particularly brave about his plan. After accusing Democrats of “raiding” Medicare with the Affordable Care Act, Ryan spares the elderly voters who supported Republicans in 2010 by making sure only he guts medical care for future seniors (he still calls it “saving Medicare,” however). And as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted, 2.9 trillion in Ryan’s budget comes from cuts in programs focused on low-income Americans. It doesn’t touch defense spending.
In other words, it focuses on cuts to programs that benefit those most likely to vote Democratic, while preserving programs that serve those more likely to vote Republican.Rewarding your constituencies while punishing the other side’s is how partisan politics usually works, but there’s nothing particularly brave about it.
Ryan himself said during the rollout that his plan isn’t so much a budget as a “cause.” As Steve Benen wrote yesterday, the cause here is destroying the modern welfare state so that rich people have to pay less in taxes. The only reason so many people think Ryan’s plan is “brave” is because they agree with this cause.
When we call a person brave, what we usually mean is that his or her “bravery” is being employed towards an end we agree with. In this case, those who are hailing Ryan’s proposal as brave are doing so because they agree with its goal, which — no matter how many times people insist otherwise — is not deficit reduction. It’s destroying the social safety net. It just so happens that’s a cause a lot of wealthy people with a disproportionate influence on our political discourse happen to believe in. So they think it’s brave, even if the numbers are phony and even if it disproportionately punishes the poor. But there’s nothing at all brave about it.
By: Adam Serwer, The Washington Post, April 7, 2011
Tea Party Budgeting: Everyone Doesn’t Deserve A Fair Shot
Three lessons I’ve learned from Tea Party budgeting:
1. Charles Lightroller was a chump.
Lightroller was the second mate on the Titanic. Legend holds that no one enforced the command to allow women and children to board the lifeboats first more rigorously than he did. Some call him a hero. But not me. That’s because I, like Rush Limbaugh, think Paul Ryan’s budget is “wonderful.”
And how could you not? Ryan surveys the budget battlefield and here’s what he sees: on one side, an onrushing horde of seniors, working people, and the disabled. On the other, defenseless corporations and their affluent compatriots prancing like happy kittens amongst the flowers. In the face of such forbidding odds some might duck, but Ryan strides onto the field of play and bravely interposes himself between the conflicting parties, prepared to defend the defenseless come what may.
Here’s what that looks like: Medicare, the health program relied on by millions of seniors, is replaced with a benefit guaranteed to fall further and further behind the actual cost of healthcare. Medicaid (healthcare for people with low-incomes) sustains deep cuts. But tax rates on corporations and the highest earners are lowered, while subsidies for oil companies remain untouched. Truly a profile in courage.
2. Pell Grants are destroying America.
I feel badly for not recognizing it, but it seems so obvious now. Freeloaders figured out how to get free food, free housing, and free electricity years ago, but they’ve never been able to reach the Holy Grail: free Biology of the East African Mud Turtle 101. Until now. “You can go to school,” warns Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana, “collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”
Welfare cheats scheming to take the college courses of their dreams? (And then not graduate!) It’s an outrage. How many of them are sitting in a college cafeteria right now snickering over a steaming plate of American Chop Suey? (Purchased with food stamps, natch.) “It’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century,” Rehberg says. Talk about getting schooled: that’s got to be one of the smartest theories I’ve ever heard.
Of course, it’s not just Pell Grants that are so nefarious. It’s Head Start too, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and …(hence, Lesson 1 above).
3. Better than Government? Fairies.
A signal question in American political life today is: when things go wrong, what role, if any, should government play in trying to make things right?
We seem to have settled on some answers. When we’re to blame for the bad things that happen, we’re on our own. The same is true when we do our best but lose fair and square. But what about when people encounter difficulties through no fault of their own and in a way that offends our sense of fairness? A kid who’s born into a family without the means to send him to a good school, or a mother who works hard every day but loses her employment because global economic forces are moving manufacturing jobs to other countries? Should government lend a hand in those kinds of cases?
The Ryans and the Rehbergs conceive of a government that does so less and less. They say the benefit of helping the disadvantaged is outweighed by its expense. What they don’t say is what happens to people who no longer can rely on needed government assistance. Perhaps magical fairies come along, wave their magic wands, and everyone who used to get a Pell Grant can still go to college, only this one is taught by chocolate bunnies! And all those people who can’t afford healthcare anymore? It’s OK. They’re now living in a cottage made entirely of gingerbread!
Let me be clear: there’s every reason to be serious about reducing the budget deficit. Political leaders on both sides of the aisle should be open to good faith ideas that emanate from anywhere on the political spectrum. But it’s reasonable to ask whether using concern over the deficit as an excuse to accomplish purely ideological goals can be considered serious.
Democrats agree that the private sector should be the engine that drives our economy and that we need the discipline to cut government programs that aren’t working. But there’s something else we believe that sets us apart from the Tea Partyers: there’s a promise inherent to the American free market system that says everyone deserves a fair shot, and that promise goes unfulfilled when people are disadvantaged by forces beyond their control and we all stand by and do nothing about it.
In other words, bring back Charles Lightroller. Boy, do we need him.
By: Anson Kaye, U.S. News and World Report, April 7, 2011
The Budget Battles: Republicans Maneuver Toward A Shutdown
The House Republicans on Tuesday made it clear to anyone who had missed it that they are not interested in a deal on the current federal budget. In a meeting at the White House, they rejected a deal to get through the next six months. President Obama, silent for too long on this fight, emerged from the meeting to say that he would tolerate no more ideological gamesmanship. But the Republicans, if anything, only increased their demands, and a government shutdown seemed likely to begin on Friday.
That the Republicans are not interested simply in reducing the deficit was made clear when the House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, released his budget plan for 2012 on the same day as the talks to finish the 2011 budget were falling apart. It was less a budget-balancing effort than a press release for the 2012 elections. Similarly, the party’s refusal to accept Mr. Obama’s overly generous budget offer for this year makes clear that its leaders prefer a shutdown to abandoning their ideological crusade to abolish their least favorite government programs.
If their goal was to reduce spending, they would have accepted the Democrats’ offer to cut $33 billion out of the budget for the next six months — the same amount as Republican leaders had originally requested before Tea Party members forced them to double it earlier this year. As the president noted, that offer constitutes the largest cut to domestic discretionary spending in history.
But Speaker John Boehner and his negotiating team have continually moved the end zone. They spurned the specific cuts proposed by the Democrats because they did not end the programs reviled by the Republicans, including education improvements, health care reform and infrastructure rebuilding. They now want a total of $40 billion, a target that just emerged on Tuesday.
After meeting with the Republicans, Mr. Obama suggested with some bitterness that they were still trying to score political points, demanding victories on abortion or gutting environmental regulation to keep the government open. He made it clear that that was not acceptable, and neither are demands to cut 60,000 Head Start teaching positions, or medical research, or other items that are vital to many Americans and the fragile economic recovery.
There will still be a few more meetings before the shutdown deadline, but leaders on both sides say they are more pessimistic about reaching agreement. The public may need to rely on the pain of an actual shutdown to bring radical House lawmakers back to reality.
By: Editorial, The New York Times, April 5, 2011
John Boehner: It’s His Shutdown And He’ll Cry If He Wants To
I guess this was inevitable.
John Boehner was driven to tears again today. This time it happened at a closed-door meeting of House Republicans.
According to sources inside the meeting, it happened while Boehner was speaking to the group about the latest on his negotiations with Democrats over government funding. Boehner talked about his meeting yesterday with President Obama and then, in a rousing conclusion, he thanked the House Republicans for standing by him and supporting him through these tense negotiations.
The Republican conference responded with a standing ovation for their speaker.
As you could imagine, that prompted the Speaker to cry.
Sure, but is there any chance the crying could become tears of joy after striking a deal? Time is obviously running out in a hurry — we’re now counting down by the number of hours, not the number of days — but there’s been some movement this afternoon.
Roll Call reported that the party’s leaders are at least talking again, and “there were indications that progress was being made.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters, “I feel better about it today than I did yesterday at the same time.”
This was not a unanimous view. Politico reported that “leaders from both parties are more pessimistic about cutting a deal before the government runs out of money.”
There was reportedly some progress on the spending-cut target. Boehner moved the goalposts this week, demanding $40 billion in cuts after agreeing privately to $33 billion, but top aides today apparently met to explore another compromise between the two numbers. The bigger hurdle, apparently, is the GOP demand for policy “riders,” which right-wing House Republicans continue to treat as having equal importance to the cuts themselves.
How party leaders can work around this is a mystery to me.
The odds notwithstanding, if a compromise is reached, what about the rule GOP leaders imposed on themselves, mandating that a bill is available for three days before a vote? In this case, Republicans are prepared to waive the rule, if there’s a deal to even vote on.
In the meantime, the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity held a rally this afternoon across the street from the Capitol, with several dozen right-wing activists on hand to listen to speeches from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and others. The Republican voters chanted, “Shut it down!” during the rally, and every other sign at the rally urged the GOP to shut down the government.
I think we can say with confidence which side of the aisle is “rooting for a government shutdown.”
By: Steve Benen, Political Animal, Washington Monthly, April 6, 2011
Government Shutdown: A Hostile Act Against A Civil Society By A “Band Of Rebels”
Shutting down the federal government is a hostile act against civil society.
The Civil War started 150 years ago in April 1861, and we are still getting over it, still talking about it, still writing about it. Some in the South have still not made peace with the end of the Civil War and hold fast to “heroes,” notably General Robert E. Lee. President Abraham Lincoln showed what he thought of Lee when he seized Arlington, Lee’s stately home and slave plantation across the Potomac River, and started burying the dead Union soldiers in the ground there.
Lincoln’s message could not be clearer: Leading an assault on the Union was not a Sunday picnic in the country. Serious consequences followed, hitting home.
Now we have a band of rebels—87 of them newcomers—in the House Republican majority, who are fixin’ for a fight. Spoiling to see the Capitol Dome go dark. Acting as if that’s the mission, the reason they crossed lines to come into the heart of the enemy. Washington is a staging ground for their defiant anger at the Union. The republic is under a new kind of siege.
If they have their way, the federal government will be closed this time next week, not what we need right now with so many American households hanging by a thread.
Now a few facts to concentrate the mind. First, the Tea Party is part of the problem. But hold the whole lot of House Republicans and their leaders responsible. If there are any grown-ups in the House, they are allowing their most radical element, unschooled freshmen, to dominate in a delicate showdown looming with the Senate and the White House.
Second, remember the Senate is controlled by a Democratic majority, a fact conveniently forgotten by the lower chamber, whose members often brag about the last election. The 2010 outcome was actually an evenly divided government, with a Democratic president to play his part in final outcomes, laws, and budgets. That’s the way it should be, if Senate Democrats and President Obama will only stand up to the rebels.
Third, the scope of the House Republican “defunding” demands is tantamount to waging war on our civil society as we know it. I don’t mean just NPR. Some of the priceless “commons” are at risk, in the proposed degradation of environmental programs. Social programs like family planning and women’s health are on the chopping block in an offensive against women’s health and reproductive rights. Chris Van Hollen, a House Democrat from Maryland, reads it right: Across the aisle is an extreme agenda to impose a right-wing ideology on town and country, using budget cuts as a vehicle.
Fourth and finally, whether $33 billion or $60 billion is cut from the budget, it will be too much. For the collective health of the nation, either number is like going on a diet when you’re starving. It’s really no use the two congressional chambers meeting in the middle, because the rebels can say they won the day—and they might be “right” in more ways than one. They skewed the debate by passing their draconian budget early and talking it up every day since.
What the GOP House freshmen lack in knowledge, they make up with sophomoric enthusiasm. They are so gung ho to camp out in the dark. Remembering Lincoln, don’t let the rebels take over and turn the lights out on us.
By: Jamie Stiehm, U.S. News and World Report, April 4, 2011
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