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The conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. Tuesday was clear: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s FY 2012 budget plan is political suicide for anyone who endorses it. But is that really the case?
In the 1980s, Republicans in the Senate devised a budget plan under the Senate Budget Committee chairmanship of Sen. Pete Domenici. I was staff director of the committee at that time. In a dramatic late night vote, then-Sen. Pete Wilson of California was wheeled onto the Senate floor in a gurney (he’d had an emergency appendectomy earlier in the day) and cast the vote that passed a budget plan that had a minor change in Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) in Social Security.
Eventually, President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill conspired to undo the deal, leaving Senate Republicans alone and unprotected politically. And, in the 1986 elections, all but one of the incumbent Republican Senators up for re-election lost. The Senate went Democratic.
Since then, entitlements and Social Security in particular have been considered political C4 — dangerous to even think about touching.
This time though is different.
Look at Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Chris Christie in New Jersey, governors who have soared in public approval while vigorously attacking state deficits and spending.
Republicans have a choice–be cowed by the attacks already underway from the Democratic Senate and Congressional Campaign Committees; or, forge forward unabashed. If they choose the former, they’ll suffer at the polls in 2012 as their 2010 supporters realize that the new bunch is just like the old bunch. If they choose the latter course–call it the Daniels-Christie way–and attack entitlement spending without apology, their courage may well be rewarded by independents and the GOP base.
Disdain for Congress usually revolves around the phrase, “They don’t have any guts.”
What if Congressional Republicans joined Paul Ryan and showed some guts?
So far, the GOP has wasted lots of political capital fighting about a trivial amount of money in the Continuing Resolution for FY11. Now, Ryan has opened a new front in the fiscal war–the FY12 budget and beyond. Fighting on that front could really make a difference in what are now projected to be truly dangerous debt levels.
It’s instructive to remember that when Ryan first developed a version of his plan (back when the GOP was in the minority) almost none of his colleagues endorsed it. Will his present colleagues rally to his cause or head for the hills?
I recall an incident several years ago when then-Sen. Domenici upbraided one of his GOP colleagues. The colleague had become a great voice against deficits and government spending. But, his target had almost always been the domestic appropriations bills, which comprise about 16 per cent of federal spending.
“Why don’t you get serious about this,” Domenici asked.
“What do you mean. I am serious,” his colleague responded.
“No. I will know you are really serious when you begin to join the fight against entitlements, the real fiscal problem,” Domenici said, “instead of these little $4 and $5 million items.”
And that’s how it is today. If the GOP simply made a deal on the CR for FY11 (at almost any level slightly more than the president offered) and then joined enthusiastically with Paul Ryan in the real war, then we would know that they are truly “serious.”
Many of the new members of the House Republican caucus have said that they aren’t career politicians — that they will vote for real change “even if it means I won’t get re-elected.”
Paul Ryan has given them a chance to back up those brave words. Let’s see how many Republicans in the House are willing to vote with Ryan to get his plan out of committee and then to pass it on the House floor.
I suspect the reward for that kind of guts will be a good chance at re-election in 2012.
But, that’s not the wisdom of the moment in the nation’s capital.
Of course, that’s the same wisdom that said Reagan could never win the Presidency, Clinton would never win re-election, and, questioned why Obama would bother running against Hillary.
Cut defense spending and raise taxes on upper income people. That will take care of the deficit.
GOP senators in swing states or Dem-leaning states have to worry about this sort of thing because they run statewide.
GOP Congressman like Paul Ryan don’t have to worry about proposals like this though because thanks to political gerrymandering and the overwhelming power of incumbency, they’re mostly inocculated from the consequences of acting out their Ayn Rand utopian fantasies.
@hisgirlfriday
Paul Ryan represents a R+2 district, which is to say, almost exactly the definition of a swing district. In reality, the most gerrymandered seats, those carved out of large cities to ensure minority representation, are Democratic.
Nice try.
Quit with your Hitler-like exaggerations.
“Hitler-like” “exaggerations”? Please.
Pointing out that Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand fanboy and that Ayn Rand inspires his ideas isn’t Hitler-like or an exaggeration. It is a FACT.
“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/43705712.html
Representative Paul Ryan, also of Wisconsin, requires staffers to read Atlas Shrugged describes Obama’s economic policies as something right out of an Ayn Rand novel, and calls Rand the reason I got involved in public service.
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/70282/index1.html
@hisgirlfriday
You know what? You’re right, and I apologize. The guy is a Randian. That saddens me, because it means he’s probably nuts.
I was joking about “Hitler-like,” by the way.
You lost, you breached Godwins’ law and mentioned the late lamented Wolf.
UPDATE
Graceful admission Mod.
“That saddens me, because it means he’s probably nuts.”
Is there any doubt about it?
Interesting that Bell’s cheerleading for the GOP backing the plan seems to carefully sidestep the issue of how utterly nonsensical the pivotal provisions of the plan are.
Apparently showing toughness is more important than not committing financial suicide following a budget that doesn’t add up on its face.
Appearances over substance — the GOP motto.
It’s interesting that Mr. Bell cites Domenici and Wilson. Both have seen their reputations in CA sour. Wilson, too, is probably responsible for the CA GOP the most conservative and hardline in the country.
Regardless of the amusing story, Ryan’s budget will never fly with the public, and would probably mean election loss for anyone advocating it. All hype aside, the Democrats have more mobilized thanks to Walker, Kasich, LePage and various other far right governors. Oh, and it appears Christie is losing his popularity, according to a poll I read today or yesterday.
Budget solutions need to be found, but the far right wing solutions aren’t the correct ones. This is a progressive, compassionate nation. It will not go along for an extended period of time a roll back in our basic values and ideas of fairness and equity and becoming a more perfect nation. The GOP and all of its Koch foundations, think tanks, and politicians will not succeed in turning the country back to the 19th Century.
@valkayec
No, this has never been a progressive (liberal) nation, and progressives are a small minority of Americans.
What an insane strawman you’ve hallucinated.
nice try, moderate, but a republican governor has tried to turn back child labor laws…..how 19th century would you like?
Moderate, I hate to break it to you but this is a progressive nation. The policies enacted ever since the founding generally have been more inclusive and targeting at helping more people, especially those in need, leaving the past and moving into the future. Look at where the nation was, say, in 1850 and where it is today? That’s progressive policy in action.
As for your straw man slap, you have only to look at what many of the state and house GOP members have been saying as well as the policies they’ve been advocating at the behest of their donors. They’re straight out of the 1800s, before TR and the Shirtwaist Factory fire. No, I wasn’t wrong in my post, just more interested in history & culture and how they affect the “now.”
The Ryan swindle not only assumes 2.8% unemployment by 2010, but residential construction back to 2006 levels. Is Don Quixote back in the saddle? Where is Pancho Villa? Our fabulous knight is unfazed, even as his retainers at Heritage adjust their webpages, will lift his lance, and charge the mocking multitudes on his splendid steed to slay error and impiety. Pancho, deferentially, reminds his knight that he is riding an ass. The knight is unperturbed, lost in deep thought. He knows best, having read one book. Unfortunately, it contained a little algebra, which he is honest enough to confess he does not understand.
It says A LOT about Americans if “showing some guts” means throwing old people out of nursing homes, denying healthcare to poor women and children, and pandering to the military industrial complex. That doesn’t take ANY guts at ALL.
Guts would be reducing the agriculture subsidy, reducing military spending, and actually DOING something about soaring healthcare costs. Not blaming the poor for being poor so you can give a tax cut to people who don’t need it.
Here’s an article that examines what might trigger a debt crisis in the United States and when that could occur:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2011/04/trigger-point-for-united-states-debt.html
Let’s hope that Congress takes swift and severe action.
I read it. Total bs.
“Republicans have a choice–be cowed by the attacks already underway from the Democratic Senate and Congressional Campaign Committees; or, forge forward unabashed.”
interesting world view … I suspect other choices may be available
Well, I think we can answer Mr. Frum’s question why a budget that is bound to fail was put forward. It’s a PR stunt to show that Ryan’s “a brave and true” Republican and boost his career, perhaps a bid for office?
As for the facts of it, it isn’t a serious proposal. Would Americans find him so heroic if they knew he followed a thinker who thought people who die in a train accident due to faulty mechanics deserve to die for “tolerating mediocrity”. (Ayn Rand ladies and gentlemen). Or that he follows a thinker who built a cult around her and took a lover from those followers who was already married.
You can’t say you stand for values if you believe in the compassionless, narcissistic Ayn Rand,who perceived most of her fellow human beings as a star regards extras, or as some here have put it, filler.
Steve Bell is not to be taken very seriously. Yesterday he was applauding the details of Ryan’s budget which contains many examples of loopiness only the most visible of which was the plan to scrap Medicare and Medicaid and use the savings to fund a huge tax payout to wealthy individuals and corporations by cutting the top rates to 25%. Now its turning into a fiasco (the employment numbers have already been disowned) Bell switches to praising Ryan for his courage and compares him (inevitably) with Reagan and suggests that Republicans are guilty of lack of courage if they refuse to support a budget which even DF admits is politically suicidal. In fact DF claims it’s not serious, it’s just a Republican memo to itself ! The good news is that this bill will have to be voted on and of course the Democrats are going to ensure that where Republicans stand on it will be a centerpiece of next years campaign.
It is not about guts, it is about brains. Ryan’s “plan” contains more unicorns that a little girl’s bedroom. I can think of six right off the top of my head:
1) unemployment will drop to 2.8%.
2) resurrection of the idea that “tax cuts pay for themselves”, despite our decades of evidence to the contrary.
3) repealing ACA will save $1.4 trillion, when in fact the CBO says it will cost $200 billion.
4) there will be a sudden housing boom, starting next year – despite the massive backlog of foreclosures and unsold houses.
5) the growth of the cost of Medicare or Medicaid will be reduced to the level of inflation.
6) All nondefense discrentionary spending can be reduced from the current 12 percent of GDP to 3 1/2 percent of GDP – although no explanation of how is this is supposed to be accomplished is given.
As a “plan” it is preposterous. Anyone who endorses it it embracing a fantasy.
Pretty good summary Watusie. You have to wonder if Bell would endorse such a load of cockamamie assumptions in a business plan. What’s significant about these comments from Bell is that we’re not talking about some rube Republican congressman from the boondocks, we’re talking about a pillar of the Republican thinking apparatus. And hence it renders ridiculous DF’s contention that Ryan’s budget was some aberration or a memo to themselves as he termed it. In fact this is a set of beliefs which lie at the heart of how Republicans would manage the economy. The aim is to destroy the new deal and the great society programs on the basis of a load of doctored numbers. Now in the case of Bell it could be just Sinclair’s salary law playing out but if we’re to take him at his word this is what today’s Republican party really believes. The good news is it’s politically toxic but as an insight into their mindset it’s rather scary.
Consider Enron. A lot of people were taken in by their smoke and mirrors. They should have known better, but lets be charitable and say human nature is fallible and give them all a pass. But to fall for the same tricks a second time around? Inexcusable. And what is Ryan doing except resurrecting the supply-side fantasies to led to massive budget deficits in the first place?
There will always be Ryans, because defending supply side economics is a very well financed gig.
Every time you can push the marginal tax rates on incomes above $250,000 down a percentage point, you save billionaires a combined 10-20 billion a year. A fraction of that can finance an army of Paul Ryans for their entire political careers. Every once in awhile, one gets the adulation of the media, like Ryan currently has, and affects the debate in a way that generates another windfall down the road.
In the case of Steve Bell I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s very much one of the army of flacks being financed. It’s very much a case of Sinclair’s salary law.
Mr. Bell’s resume includes “former managing director at Salomon Brothers”.
There’s the dislink here. Bell touts Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Chris Christie in New Jersey, governors who have soared in public approval while vigorously attacking state deficits and spending.
But Bell just doesn’t seem to understand that for Americans who hope to make in a decade what the bonus for a managing director at Salomon Brothers might be in an off year, Social Security and Medicare are NOT just another “spending” thing.
It’s money that they’ve seen removed from every paycheck they’ve ever gotten, in a separate line – a promise that if they work hard throughout their life and consistently contribute to FICA, in their old age they’ll have a guaranteed income stream and subsidized healthcare.
For a former managing director at Salomon Brothers, that FICA contribution, capped at a fraction of their income, was equivalent in the average year to what they may have blown on a nice weekend getaway with the wife … you add up $1500 for a couple first class tickets to Palm Springs, $1000 for a few nights in a gated resort, $800 for green fees for a couple days on the links, $700 for a few first class meals with wine included – that’s pretty damn close.
For the guy working in a pulp mill or woman working behind a lunch counter for 40 years, their FICA deduction was real money each year.
Take the little bit of financial security that SS and Medicare promised to those people away … and you’ll see exactly how it’s just like Christie or Daniels deciding to cut a few state jobs.
Righteous!
Moderate // Apr 7, 2011 at 2:28 am
@valkayec
This is a progressive, compassionate nation.
No, this has never been a progressive (liberal) nation, and progressives are a small minority of Americans.
Right.
56% of Americans favor “Congress passing new legislation that would regulate energy output from private companies in an attempt to reduce global warming”
(USA Today/Gallup Poll. June 11-13, 2010)
But progressives are a small minority of Americans.
51% of Americans believe that Congress should either expand the healthcare reform bill, or should keep the law as is.
(Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll. March 8-13, 2011)
But progressives are a small minority of Americans.
53% of Americans believe that it should be legal for gay couples to wed.
(ABC News/Washington Post Poll. March 10-13, 2011)
But progressives are a small minority of Americans.
63% of Americans think that “Federal funding for elementary, secondary and higher education” should be increased.
(CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. March 11-13, 2011)
But progressives are a small minority of Americans.
Shall I go on… ? Maybe not, since I’m sure none of those things are actually “Progressive” to you?
Balconsfault, thanks. But you forgot to add the progessive history of the country. I”m not referring the “lib” as Moderate seems to think. But actual progressive history: giving the franchise to non-landowers; ending slavery; giving women the right to work; building canals and roadways with government monies; setting minimum wage and labor laws; ending child labor; creating banking and consumer protections; subsidizing the elderly and the poor. The list of progressive policies, of course, is much longer.
I think it’s important the people actually understand the progressive history of our country, because those policies reflect the true nature of our people, of our citizens as a whole not just the selfish few who only think about what they’re getting out of the deal or what it might cost them.
“…to build a more perfect union.”
I’m going to address myself to one aspect of Ryan’s proposal, his idea to scrap Medicare and instead have senior citizens buy health insurance from a menu of available plans and pay for it using subsidies based on income. He asserts that his plan will lower medical costs, a goal I’m sure all of us share.
The press, of course, is uninterested in wonky details like whether Ryan’s plan would in fact work, but a search of public health journals for articles by Uwe Reinhardt, the go-to guy on medical economics, provides an explanation for our higher per capita medical costs as compared to western Europe. This explanation begins with the universally accepted fact that our system for financing health care is much more fragmented than in western Europe. Even in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, the most free market of the European countries in terms of medical finance, the systems of paying for medical care are much more centralized than ours. From this, Reinhardt and his colleagues note
1) the buyers of medical care in western Europe have much greater market power compared to the suppliers than here, and they use it to get lower prices;
2) administrative costs in these centralized systems are much lower in western Europe than here, and the savings are passed along to the consumer.
If this explanation is true, Ryan’s plans for Medicare would worsen the problem of medical costs rather then improve it.
Am I right? If not, show me why.
What people seem to fundamentally ignore is that private insurance companies have no incentive to reduce the costs of healthcare.
On the contrary – private insurance companies have an incentive to see healthcare costs go up.
They skim a percentage of premiums throughout their system … as commissions for agents, as administrative fees, as salaries and bonuses for executives, as dividends for shareholders. And the more healthcare costs increase … the larger commissions and fees and salaries and bonuses and dividends are.
The private system is gamed to always result in increasing healthcare costs.
Let’s not forget their incentive for denying treatment, which also increases overall health care costs since people end up postponing treatment until it is even more costly.
Entirely correct of course balconesfault. The way healthcare is paid for is entirely geared to rent seeking. 30% of of a billion is more than 30% of half a billion. In the broader philosophical sense they have no real incentive to contain inflation at the delivery end which of course is incentivized to increase costs as it seeks profit.
Ryan’s “plan” includes the astonishing assumption that Medicare and Medicaid can be held to the rate of inflation – but then fails to include any mechanisms for making this happen.
It is about shifting – not controlling, not lowering – costs. More specifically, it is about shifting costs to those most unable to afford them.
Quoting Ezra Klein,
Bell touts Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Chris Christie in New Jersey, governors who have soared in public approval while vigorously attacking state deficits and spending.
Interesting list Bell has here, isn’t it? Pretty sure there are some other governors “vigorously attacking state deficits and spending.” Why no love for them from Bell? Oh right, they are the ones who disprove his premise.
nanotek, good one.
“If the GOP simply made a deal on the CR for FY11 (at almost any level slightly more than the president offered) and then joined enthusiastically with Paul Ryan in the real war”
And just who elected Ryan supreme head of the Republican party? How presumptuous is it that a single Congressman of middling rank now has determined the Republican agenda for next year?
My Congressman is a moderate Republican elected because he is known as a moderate Republican, the people in my district don’t want to be saddled with a Ryan clone. If Ryan wants to set the agenda for the nation, let him run for President but to state that now, because he wrote a fantasy budget, he is now the Congressman who must be obeyed is simply nuts.
Ryan had the right to write his agenda and I have no problem with is trying to persuade other Republicans to go along with him, but don’t presume those others do have to. Considering the reception his agenda receives with actual Congressmen (outside of platitudes he has had very little actual support in the past as evidence by his non existent Congressional record)
And seriously Bell, “real war” you use the term “real war” when there is, in fact, a REAL WAR that American soldiers are fighting in and dying is pretty pathetic.
You want to join in the real war, sign up at your local recruiting office. Jackass.
How presumptuous is it that a single Congressman of middling rank now has determined the Republican agenda for next year?
Well, things thrown into a vacuum have a tendency to expand, or even explode. And the Republican agenda is basically a vacuum – it’s functionally “how do we make Obama look bad today”, and pundits get tired of talking about the vapidity of such a stance (and for the most part, they won’t talk about the unpatriotic nature of that stance).
So something as etheral as Ryan’s proposal suddenly looks massively important, because there was nothing of substance for it to displace.