Thanks Vintage Freeper for posting this:
Posted on 03/29/2012 2:50:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As the House passes Paul Ryan’s latest budget, a minor controversy brews outside Congress about whether it matters that, according to the CBO, it doesn't balance.
The controversy is occurring on the conservative side of the aisle --- but it's easy for liberals to exploit. Some lefties are already suggesting Ryan's budget is proof positive that we can't balance the budget without raising taxes, for example, and/or reviving the argument that, if deficit reduction really matters and Republicans refuse to raise taxes, then all spending cuts --- including cuts to defense, which the Ryan budget reverses --- should be on the table.
If we don't want to become mired again in a debate about whether we should raise taxes, then now is the time for conservatives to rally around Ryan. For balanced budget diehards, the purest reason to support his budget is that Ryan says the budget will definitely balance by 2040 and could could balance within 10. Even if other experts are right that the U.S. might never have a balanced budget again, though, supporting Ryan’s budget is still the best way to avoid Obama’s tax trap, as The Wall Street Journal explained in a recent editorial:
The GOP critics are wrong on the economics and politics. Mr. Ryan’s plan may not balance the budget within 10 years, but that’s the wrong policy guidepost. Mr. Obama can easily balance the budget faster—by raising taxes.
Mr. Ryan wants to avoid a tax increase and reform the tax code because he realizes that the budget will never balance over the long term without economic growth faster than today’s 2% a year. By stressing budget balance over growth, Mr. Chocola and the tea-party critics are falling into Mr. Obama’s deficit and tax trap. …
They are also playing by the Beltway’s big-government budget rules. The critics on the right are judging Mr. Ryan’s budget according to Congressional Budget Office estimates that assume little or no economic benefit from better policy. Mr. Ryan’s official budget proposal follows CBO scoring, but he is also trying to break out of that straitjacket.
Voters have every reason to be skeptical of Republican promises, but Mr. Ryan’s budget is hardly a status quo document. It’s light years better than the Tom DeLay budgets of the 2000s.
Mr. Ryan is thinking ahead of his critics by focusing on the two most important priorities: growth and reform. Without both, limited government will be nothing more than a tea party slogan and a balanced budget will be nothing more than a tax-increase trap.
Similarly, shrinking from supporting the portion of Ryan’s bill that protects defense spending just encourages liberals to encourage spending cuts in that area. The Constitution mentions “providing for the common defense” as a major purpose of government, though. Surely, it shouldn’t be the first place we look to make cuts — and we have good reason to reevaluate the specific defense spending cap that was included in the Budget Control Act. In case you’ve forgotten, it was included to try to compel Republicans on the Super Committee to agree to tax hikes.
The Ryan budget enjoys the support of House leadership, most of the GOP faithful and leading conservative voices. While I’m always sympathetic to those who criticize policy from the rightmost possible perspective, this is definitely one of those occasions when we need to rally around the plan that exists instead of waiting for a perfect plan that nobody has presented.
Update: This post originally mistakenly suggested the CBO had corroborated Ryan’s claim that the budget would eventually balance, but CBO can’t actually project beyond 10 years. My thanks to Guy Benson for the correction.
Only in the sense that we go over the cliff at 20 mph vs. 100 mph now.
Ryan purposefully failed to cut the Defense budget.
Ryan purposefully failed to cut loopholes to the Federal Reserve and banks with seats on the Federal Reserve Board.
If it isn’t clear enough to you that we’re indentured servants to certain interest groups, try to find someone who graduated high school to explain it to you.
Exactly right. We are screwed, it’s only a matter of how fast we will crash.
That’s why I will never vote for mitt. In a year or so when everything comes crashing down I want a D at the helm. They did it, they can get the blame for it.
LLS
Thanks Vintage Freeper for posting this:
Thanks SeekAndFind.
Goes to prove how stupid liberals are. If budgets could be balanced by raising taxes, Greece, Spain, Portugal & Ireland would have been out of the woods long ago.
It is like a car going 100 mph in the direction of deficits.
If you slam the brakes you will end up in the ditch. In this weak economy if a substantial tax increase is passed, it will turn into a depression. Only prudent method of balancing the budgets is to GROW THE ECONOMY. It will be slow but there is no good alternative. If spending is cut suddenly, it will also kill the economy. In Greece they were forced to cut spending to get the bailout and the country is a disaster. Homelessness, unemployment, riots, strikes, all are rampant now.
They are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The reason why I see all of Ryan’s budgets as nonsense is that neither he, nor the current leadership in Congress, have any power over the Congress of the future.
If they want to balance the budget and do it credibly, they have to talk about cutting spending within their current terms. Cut a trillion *now*. This year.
That would be credible.
Talking about taking 10 years to achieve some semblance of balance is nonsense on stilts.
Further, talking as tho the defense budget cannot be cut is nonsense as well. I could go into the defense budget and rip out at least $300B in spending we don’t need.
It is also imperative that we recognize the fact that the CBO is required to use static (not real world) rather than dynamic (real world) methods of analysis. If they were able to use dynamic methods the Ryan budget would balance very much sooner!
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