Paul Ryan and the Politics of Debt

[TomCADem]

Source: TIME


So who is the GOP's man of the moment? A telegenic supply-side conservative, Ryan cut his teeth as a speechwriter for Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett in the mid-1990s. Even back then, says Pete Wehner, for whom Ryan worked at Empower America, "it was clear that he was a bright star in the constellation." After serving as legislative director for Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, Ryan mounted a successful bid for Wisconsin's First Congressional District seat in 1998, at age 28. Now 41, the avid outdoorsman is ensconced in a district that shares his pro-life, pro-gun-rights views, and has ascended to become the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee. "He's an unabashed policy wonk," says Mark Green, a fellow Wisconsin Republican and friend who was elected to the House the same year as Ryan. "This is a guy who would take policy papers back to the office with him at night and stay up late looking through them.

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Now, the question is how honest the coming debate over the debt crisis will be. Democrats are already counterattacking Ryan's plan as less an act of budgetary efficiency than a heartless assault on seniors and the poor that largely spares the well-off. Even the tax reforms in Ryan's plan are revenue neutral, they note, asking nothing more of big business or the wealthy. And though he peddles the idea of honest talk and tough medicine, Ryan sidesteps the politically-fraught topic of Social Security, even though he agrees it is a long-term driver of debt. (Vote for the world's most influential people in the 2011 TIME 100 Poll.)

The coming debate will also be, in large measure, a re-litigation of Barack Obama's health care plan. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama's plan will save $130 billion over 10 years (estimates vary). If that forecast is accurate, then Obama has already taken a major step towards slashing the national debt. But Ryan simply doesn't buy that figure, and claims at a press conference unveiling his plan this morning that repealing health care will save $1.5 trillion. That's a $1.63 trillion dispute - one that won't easily be reconciled, and one not likely to give us a surplus of the honesty Ryan has called for.

If it goes anywhere at all, Ryan's plan will first change dramatically. Democrats want no part of it - and the same goes even for many Republicans who may sympathize with the plan's goals but worry it outpaces the public's true appetite for deficit-cutting. But Democrats can't afford to ignore Ryan's plan completely; they, too, have substantive worries about the debt. And, as President Obama's own rhetoric demonstrates, they know the public wants some action on this front. So Ryan has, in effect, fired a starting gun today for the great debt battle. Let's see whether Washington can deliver America an honest and constructive fight.


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The corporate media has been largely supportive and impressed with Paul Ryan's proposed budget, which cuts taxes for the rich, while cutting benefits to the sick, the elderly and the poor. Yet, despite this trickle down economics on steroids approach to the budget, the mainstream media has used glowing language to describe the proposal as "bold" while ignoring the tax cuts that are financed on the backs of our nation's most vulnerable.

This my friends is an example of how the corporate media pushes corporatist propaganda to galvanize support on the right while trying to spread discord on the left by playing up, or making up, stories about disagreements on the left when we all universally oppose Ryan's proposed budget. Heck, Ryan's proposed budget makes the Obama's deficit commission proposal look like the communist manifesto by comparison, since that proposal actually proposed tax hikes to the rich.

[FrenchieCat]

1. We get played like a fiddle and have learned to love the sound.

It's principle for some added to uniformed voters = a win for Republicans and their media.

[Vinee]

2. end the wars or raise taxes to pay for them, then we'll talk about fiscal responsibility.

[No Elephants]

3. +1

[NothingRight]

4. Ryan demonstrates the way the left should lead

Anyone who takes the budget proposal that Ryan presented seriously should have their head examined. But, in all of the assassination of the facts in the proposal, one glaring fact gets overlooked.

THE COMPROMISE FACTOR

We have all watched while the GOP started the CD debate at $33 billion in cuts to move forward, then jumped it up to $61 billion "because of the Tea Party". Now the Dems have come to them with a $33 billion dollar "compromise". In other words, we are now willing to give them what they wanted originally. Now, however, they don't want it. Now they want $40 billion, plus guarantees that the riders to stop funding Planned Parenthood, NPR, and the EPA.

This is the same strategy that the Dems should have used for their ideas, instead of coming into the negotiation having compromised already, then agreeing to meet in the middle, which ends up being the position the conservatives had in mind originally.

You either believe in what you are proposing or don't bother. We know damn well that Ryan and his elites believe in this joke of a financial plan.

http://wp.me/p1mIkk-dH