In 1983, the British Labour Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it “the longest suicide note in history.” House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has just released a recklessly bold, 73-page, ten-year budget plan. At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history.
That depends on whether (a) President Obama counters with a deficit-reduction plan of equal seriousness, rather than just demagoguing the Ryan plan till next Election Day, (b) there are any Republicans beyond the measured, super-wonky Ryan who can explain and defend a plan of such daunting scope and complexity, and (c) Americans are serious people.
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My guesses: No. Not really. And I hope so (we will find out definitively in November 2012).
The conventional line of attack on Ryan’s plan is already taking shape: It cuts poverty programs and “privatizes” Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich. Major demagoguery on all three counts.
(1) The reforms of the poverty programs are meant to change an incentive structure that today perversely encourages states to inflate the number of dependents (because the states then get more “free” federal matching money) and also encourages individuals to stay on the dole. The 1996 welfare reform was similarly designed to reverse that entitlement’s powerful incentives to dependency. Ryan’s idea is to extend the same logic of rewarding work to the non-cash parts of the poverty program — from food stamps to public housing.
When you hear this being denounced as throwing the poor in the snow, remember these same charges were hurled with equal fury in 1996. President Clinton’s own assistant Health and Human Services secretary, Peter Edelman, resigned in protest, predicting that abolishing welfare would throw a million children into poverty. On the contrary. Within five years child poverty had declined by more than 2.5 million — one of the reasons the 1996 welfare reform is considered one of the social-policy successes of our time.
(2) Critics are describing Ryan’s Medicare reform as privatization, a deliberately loaded term designed to instantly discredit the idea. Yet the idea is essentially to apply to all of Medicare the system under which Medicare Part D has been such a success: a guaranteed insurance subsidy. Thus, instead of paying the health provider directly (fee-for-service), Medicare would give seniors about $15,000 of “premium support,” letting the recipient choose among a menu of approved health-insurance plans.
Call this privatization if you like, but then would you call the Part D prescription benefit “privatized”? If so, there’s a lot to be said for privatization. Part D is both popular and successful. It actually beat its cost projections — a near-miraculous exception to just about every health-care program known to man.
Under Ryan’s plan, everyone 55 and over is unaffected. Younger workers get the insurance subsidy starting in 2022. By eventually ending the current fee-for-service system that drives up demand and therefore prices, this reform is far more likely to ensure the survival of Medicare than the current near-insolvent system.
(3) The final charge — cutting taxes for the rich — is the most scurrilous. That would be the same as calling the Ronald Reagan–Bill Bradley 1986 tax reform “cutting taxes for the rich.” In fact, it was designed for revenue neutrality. It cut rates — and for everyone — by eliminating loopholes, including corrupt exemptions and economically counterproductive tax expenditures, to yield what is generally considered by Left and Right an extraordinarily successful piece of economic legislation.
Ryan’s plan is classic tax reform — which even Obama says the country needs: It broadens the tax base by eliminating loopholes that, in turn, provide the revenues for reducing rates. Tax reform is one of those rare public policies that produce social fairness and economic efficiency at the same time. For both corporate and individual taxes, Ryan’s plan performs the desperately needed task of cleaning out the myriad accumulated cutouts and loopholes that have choked the tax code since 1986.
Ryan’s overall plan tilts at every windmill imaginable, including corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. The only thing left out is Social Security. Which proves only that Ryan is not completely suicidal.
But the blueprint is brave and profoundly forward-looking. It seeks nothing less than to adapt the currently unsustainable welfare state to the demographic realities of the 21st century. Will it survive the inevitable barrage of mindless, election-driven, 30-second attack ads (see above)? Alternative question: Does Obama have half of Ryan’s courage?
As usual, spot on, Dr. K. Although I can't disagree with your final conclusions, the recent events in Wis give one hope for an answer of "Yes" to (c) of your opening tripart question.
But this is also not the voter of the past, Americans are not dealing with Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, and the stakes are so high it would take an absolute idiot to not see the damage that we are struggling through and getting worse by the day.
Obama is gone and the Dem Senate in 2012 if they do not offer anything close to this. You have the bold right direction vs. no direction but debt spiral. It is a no brainer at the ballot box when people won't even be able to afford gas to get to work by 2012.
As usual, an insightful and intelligent opinion from Mr. Krauthammer. However, might I suggest a slightly different opinion? This is not 1996....the government is infinitely more bloated in terms of both spending and workforce. We're on the brink of insolvency. My hope is that as Democrats attempt to derail Mr. Ryan's plan, aging Americans will see that it is morally wrong to continue to vote for politicians that propose to bankrupt the country so that they (aging Americans) can continue to cling to failed policies, and accept the same government policies that have turned us from the world's creditor to the world's leading debtor nation. It is WRONG for senior Americans (I'm 55, by the way) to leave their children and grandchildren with a financial noose around their necks, so that they can live their final lives in comfort and retirement relaxation. Mr. Ryan's proposals sound honest, well thought out, and reasonable given the horrible mess the government has put us in. I don't trust the Democrats, who have spent trillions of dollars, much of it wasted and for their union buddies. Public employee pensions and benefits / pay packages, the size of government work forces, and runaway spending will send the country quickly into insolvency, unless reforms like Mr. Ryan's are enacted. If the dollar becomes worthless, as does the government printing them, then what would seniors do? Keep voting for Democrats?
Dr. K and I are about the same age. Maybe that's why we're both pessimistic about the answers to his three questions.
We're old enough to remember how JFK beat Nixon with Mayor Daley's graveyard vote and to have observed similar Democratic miracles ever since.
With the certitude of youth our generation induced people who should have known better to ratify the 26th Amendment, enfranchising impressionable adolescents whose MTV and YouTube votes can now swing elections. In the age of Twitter, Facebook and widespread civic ignorance produced by deliberately dumbed-down schools this cohort is more manipulable than ever. Exhibit A: Obama's opening gambit for 2012 appealing to "minorities and the young."
These electoral headwinds are compounded by the unprecedented narcissism of my generation, the first generation in history to sharply curtail or even eliminate its own posterity under the rubric of freedom, aka the "woman's right to choose."
IronmanAtl writes: "It is WRONG for senior Americans (I'm 55, by the way) to leave their children and grandchildren with a financial noose around their necks, so that they can live their final lives in comfort and retirement relaxation."
But why would senior Americans give a fig for their children, given that they've aborted millions upon millions of them and, in far too many cases, relied on government to provide everything from daycare to Pell grants for the survivors so that they could have that second house on the beach, an extra BMW, a trophy wife with an expensive divorce in middle age, or whathaveyou.
RealityCheck writes: "...the stakes are so high it would take an absolute idiot to not see the damage that we are struggling through and getting worse by the day."
RealityCheck is right, of course. The problem is that we allow--nay, encourage--absolute idiots to vote.
JFK1967 writes: "...the recent events in Wis give one hope for an answer of "Yes" to (c) of your opening tripart question."
I ache to agree, but I'm too old for optimism. The outcome of Wisconsin is still up in the air. Minnesota's electoral system is probably equally or more honest than Wisconsin's, but Al Franken is a senator.
I think we should also keep in mind that the Ryan blue print leaves in place over $7 trilion of debt over 10 years. It's a start, but not a destination.
I think Ryan should keep a watch over his back. The knive will more than likely come from is own party -especially in the Senate.
Before I post on this article, if anyone with website clout reads this, thanks for scrapping the last, impossible for my eyes to read, human poster detector. I can't say this new one is any better as I just saw it - but I REALLY liked the math equations best!
Thnxn
It may not be the legal definition but what they're doing, both sides, is TREASON. Spending should be cut to balance the budget now and in the future. Public servants spending money that isn't part of a balanced budget, knowlingly spending money we don't have, should face severe legal action or worse. Harry Reid, for example, should be in prison.
"B" is the crucial question here, and if Mr. Ryan's classes on the debt he was giving lawmakers earlier was effective, adapting it for public consumption would be an idea.
A politician standing in front of a camera, trying to explain economics to the populace, is ineffective. I had trouble listening to some professors in college drone on about it - and I was interested, and paying to be there.
What may make the defense of this plan more effective is to "dumb it down" to significant clips - much as the Liberals are doing to attack it. Listening to Reid or Pelosi speak for 5 plus minutes at a presser does them more harm than good. Hearing the clip of how children will starve and seniors will die is what our attention spam absorbs.
Think cowboy poetry. How much more of Reids speech do most people know?
I did not yet see Ryan's video introducing this plan, but I saw the graph clip on the news, and that visual stuck.
The GOP not only needs to explain the proposal, they need to neutralize and defeat the Libs attack, while highlighting and defending their idea. Projecting the specific effect the Liberal plan will have on each targeted group could be useful, in addition to the overall tax burden and insolvency of the Nation.
Ryan was brilliant to specifically include ObamaCare in his cuts. Let's have that discussion again!
"Simply by defunding and repealing ObamaCare the debt would be reduced to X. Then a rational, bipartisan plan to fix what is wrong within our healthcare system must be developed. A solution that does not, however, grow government by N degree and hand a bill of Y trillions to our children."
When I contemplate questions such as these and their somber-to-depressing answers, I try to remember this:
It is a natural tendency for a polity to turn into a democracy, which at some point collapses under its own weight. I won't bother quoting specific authors, since many Classical thinkers talked about this--and I think they were all correct. Now, *that* is the principal "headwind" that Muleskinner alludes to.
Therefore, is also natural for conservatism to always fight an upstream battle--in 2008, in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, in 2012 (you'll see) and everywhere and anytime.
We are already at the democratic stage, and we are witnessing the (advanced) beginning of our State collapsing under its own weight. Debt, inflation and deficit are growing, while a previously (somewhat) united population turns into warring tribes fighting for short-term spoils and instant gratification.
The other "tribes" (including that of the future generations) become nothing but competitors at best and enemies at worst--so, if I fail at getting what I can for myself, I can at least see to it that the other guy gets his comeuppance.
The Democrat party has it always easier--its very name points at the natural direction of our State. That's ultimately not the media's fault, not the inept Republican leadership's fault, a bad candidate's fault, etc.--that's just the natural state of things.
And the public employee unions are nothing but the living symbol of how a state collapses under its own weight. "Voting themselves largesse from the public fisk" is what they do.
So, good luck to Ryan, whom I cheer on with the same cringe in my eyes as I have for the 27th Light Brigade every time I watch that immortal movie.
I know he is no Obama but he is as unknown as Obama was... I do not know his qualifications and as well he is in his frist term.. if we do not have better I would vote for him but surely we have someone who has more experience to run.
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Heirloom Seeds, "How God grows His Garden."
I agree with IronmanAtl.
The role of “Greatest Generation’ has not completely played out. They have one more mission to complete. Their fortitude, wisdom, perseverance, and patriotism will steer them away for from pandering politicians who offer ever more while ignoring the risk to their beloved nation. They will shift the senior citizen demographic away from the democrats in the next election.
Thus I’m becoming more optimistic. The president s popularity is slowly decreasing despite the fact the mainstream media is in Full Campaign Mode (when have they not been?). The actions over the past two years are not making sense to the inherent common sense of the electorate. Media bias/obfuscation isn’t working anymore. People know we are in trouble and know change is necessary. The Times Are A Changin’.
My one problem with the approach of this article is: why bother framing the discussion based on simplistic readings of the Far Left's complaints? Many of these people would vote against it simply because it was proposed by a Republican.
Ryan's proposal should be the first step in a discussion; let's not get mired down in the usual arguments that just go around in circles.
Let's use this as a stepping stone to create a bill that could actually become law (or, at least, get a few of the ideas into law) rather than falling back into partisan bickering (or, to be exact, bickering with the extreme sides of both parties because the Far Right has issues with Ryan's bill as well.) I feel like a lot of common sense steps like closing tax loopholes, cost-cutting/control are going to be lost because the discussion will focus on issues like privatizing medicare.
Let's be realistic; DC is Deadlock City - while overhaul would be nice, we should realistically be working on small steps if we want to make differences that last. (Just look at how Obama bungled the health care law and helped ruin some common sense proposals by lumping them in with socialized healthcare.)
Are the American people serious? Seriously ridiculous to have voted for the current inhabitant of the Oval Office. Is the President serious? Seriously, Krauthammer, what a silly question. He’s not serious about We the People. Wishing Paul Ryan all the best and what gorgeous eyes you have, Chairman. Cut that bleeding budget.
"(2) Critics are describing Ryan’s Medicare reform as privatization, a deliberately loaded term designed to instantly discredit the idea."
This line strikes me as funny. You could say the same thing about Obamacare "Critics are describing Obama's healthcare reform as socialism, a deliberately loaded term designed to instantly discredit the idea"
I like Ryan's proposal and the article is factual but it cracks me up when partisan journalists use the same rhetoric as the politicians they support.
"Before I post on this article, if anyone with website clout reads this, thanks for scrapping the last, impossible for my eyes to read, human poster detector."
I agree.
This was a great column. Thanks for the insight Krauthammer, hopefully the majority of Americans will be able to see through the demagoguery.
Mr. Ryan deserves enormous credit for having taken Leviathan by the horns. Witness the fulmination over the end game of FY 2011 over far lower stakes. We are just beginning to see in response to the Ryan proposal what will bloom into an historic blood libel lodged against anyone who attempts to steer away from the fiscal abyss in front of us.
Short of having millions of Tea Party people present in DC to personally perp walk the Congress through through votes on serious reform, the prospects for success are quite low.
The awful part is that even if Mr. Ryan's plan were adopted in full, it does not stop the bleeding. Forces outside our control will likely interrupt the very slow glide path to some semblance of fiscal sanity contained in Ryan's proposal.
There is every reason to believe that the fate of our immediate descendants is already set - generations of dramatically lessened prospects in a world that will be far more dangerous. Both the prospects and the danger are directly attributable to our attempt to commit national suicide, which may still succeed.
The real-world clock is ticking and the folks in DC are obsessing on the political clock.
As usual, it is difficult to disagree with Krauthammer's logical and persuasive arguement. This highlights the need for well informed, rationale individuals to educate themselves on the plan and to become advocates with their family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and politicians. The American Revolution succeeded because a committed minority was willing to risk everything for what they knew was right. Through their victory we have the right to free speech. Let's be sure we exercise that right in defense of a plan to save our republic.
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