Posted on 03/12/2013 6:49:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If Rep. Paul Ryan wants people to take his budget manifestos seriously, he should be honest about his ambition: not so much to make the federal government fiscally sustainable as to make it smaller.
You will recall that the Ryan Budget was a big Republican selling point in last year’s election. Most famously, Ryan proposed turning Medicare into a voucher program. He offered the usual GOP recipe of tax cuts — to be offset by closing certain loopholes, which he would not specify — along with drastic reductions in non-defense “discretionary” spending.
If the plan Ryan offered had been enacted, the federal budget would not come into balance until 2040. For some reason, Republicans forgot to mention this detail in their stump speeches and campaign ads.
Voters were supposed to believe that Ryan was an apostle of fiscal rectitude. But his real aim wasn’t to balance the budget. It was to starve the federal government of revenue. Big government, in his worldview, is inherently bad — never mind that we live in an awfully big country.
Ryan and Mitt Romney offered their vision, President Obama offered his, and Americans made their choice. Rather emphatically.
Now Ryan, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, is coming back with an ostensibly new and improved version of the framework that voters rejected in November. Judging by the preview he offered Sunday, the new plan is even less grounded in reality than was the old one.
Voters might not have focused on the fact that Ryan’s original plan wouldn’t have produced a balanced budget until today’s high school students reached middle age, but the true deficit hawks in the House Republican caucus certainly noticed. They demanded a budget that reached balance much sooner.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
All libs can do is demagogue. Its pathetic. 2040 to reaching a balanced budget is better than collapse.
Eugene Robinson’s alternative proposal to balance the budget: __________________________{*crickets*}
So, Eugene, how many people have voted for the Obama budgets? All of them together - what, 500 votes total, counting repeated voters, in both houses? Or am I being far too generous and the actual total is less than a hundred?
Ahh, yes, it’s always so much easier to be critical of that which was never really on the table, vs that which even hardline Democrats can’t stomach.
Eugene Robinson lives in an awfully big empty space between his ears.
Exactly my thought.
Eugene Idiot said...
“Big government, in his worldview, is inherently bad — never mind that we live in an awfully big country.”
And this is what journalism schools are churning out?
Please Postfools, don’t even THINK of talking math.
It’s beyond your meager capabilities.
That comment to “Postfools” is - of course - to the Wash ComPost dorks...not to we conservatives, who even on a bad day are far, far, far above the typical “progressive”.
Worse things than the government missing a few meals could happen, Eugene.
Its amazing how far things have slid since Reagan, who won two landslides by campaigning on smaller government.
Robinson talks about small govenment politicians the same way McCarthy talked about closet communists 60 years ago.
"...as to make it smaller...."
And, that is a problem - how?
Dolt.
Ryan and the committee (Pubbie members) are on CSPAN 1 now discussing the budget plan.
E: Both Obama and Ryan were reelected in 2012 so yes, Americans did make their choice.
Liberals will argue that Ryan was re-elected by only his constituents in a small section of Wisconsin, while Obama was re-elected by 51% of the UNITED STATES with over 60 million votes..
Eugene's comment is especially superfluous when it was the 'news' media, whom the general public depends upon to make informed voting decisions, who made their choice first.
HA!
*snicker*
As opposed to the Democratic party proposal authored by Rose E. Scenario.
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