JONATHAN CHAIT APRIL 21, 2011
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As the pummeler referenced immediately below, I'm genuinely impressed with this introspection by Jacob Weisberg:
After my last column, I got pummeled in the liberal blogosphere for asserting that the Ryan budget represented a big step in the direction of conservative honesty. I deserved some of the abuse. Though I criticized Ryan for his unsupported rosy assumptions (shame on you, Heritage Foundation hacks), I reacted too quickly and didn't sort out just how laughable Ryan's long-term spending projections were. His plan projects an absurd future, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in which all discretionary spending, now around 12 percent of GDP, shrinks to 3 percent of GDP by 2050. Defense spending alone was 4.7 percent of GDP in 2009. With numbers like that, Ryan is more an anarchist-libertarian than honest conservative.
Pummeling gets results!
But then Weisberg immediately veers off course:
Yet I think I was right in crediting Ryan with owning up to what other Republicans won't: that the party's demand for ever-lower taxes would basically end Medicaid and Medicare as entitlement programs.
The problem, of course, is that Ryan doesn't own up to this at all. Continuing the Republican practice of denying any connections between revenues and deficits, he refuses to concede that the spending levels he proposes are in any way constrained by his preference for staying at or below Bush-level tax rates. Here's a typical example of Ryan dodging the point:
BOB SCHIEFFER: If the country is going bankrupt, if the country needs to borrow forty cents of every dollar that it spends, how do you help that by reducing the amount of taxes that the richest people in the country pay? It would be seem to be that’s where you get revenue. How do-- how do you-- how do you justify?
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: Two things. Two things, number one, we don’t have a tax problem. Our revenuers are going back to where they have been historically. We have a big spending problem. Spending is growing at a very unsustainable rate. So let’s focus on spending. The other thing I would simply say is massive tax increases. The President’s proposing 1.5 trillion in tax increases. The Democrats in Congress are proposing anywhere from two to sixteen trillion dollars in tax increases based on the three budgets they brought to the floor the other day. We don’t want to slow down the economy. Here’s the-- here’s what we’re trying to get, spending cuts and controls to get spending under control because that’s the problem and economic growth and job creation. We don’t want to give up one to get the other. Raising tax rates on anybody, especially successful small businesses slows down the economy, loses jobs and if you have lower economic growth, you have less revenues and it puts you further behind. We want more tax revenues but we want to get it by expanding job creation, by expanding economic growth so the secret to success here is economic growth and job creation through tax reform, not tax cuts, tax reform at the same levels get better economic growth which we get more revenues and also focus on the problem. The problem is spending.
That's the answer Ryan provides over and over again. He paints the debt as an existential crisis, but refuses to acknowledge any tradeoff between the tax rates he prefers and the affordable level of social spending. And rather than acknowledge that he would end Medicare and Medicaid as entitlement programs, he insists against all evidence that free market forces will make the programs stronger than ever:
We think by adding competition and choice in the delivery of medical care, by giving the consumer more power is a better solution. The prescription drug bill, which works like this, came in 40 percent below cost projections. Why? Because it has choice and competition.
Now, to be fair, President Obama's budget vision is fairly vague, too. He proposes large, unnamed cuts to non-entitlement spending -- though not nearly as large as Ryan's -- without defining what government functions he wants to pare back or eliminate. He refuses to admit that the level of government he finds necessary would almost certainly require returning tax rates for the middle class, not just the rich, back to Clinton-era levels.
Anyway, I'm glad to see Jacob Weisberg has thought better of Ryan's plan.
11 comments
Kudos to you, Jonathan, for that excellent dissection of Paul Ryan's plan.
- liberalref
April 21, 2011 at 12:56pm
My problem with Weisberg isn't that he got it wrong when he "reacted too quickly and didn't sort out just how laughable Ryan's long-term spending projections were". It's that he failed as a journalist in reporting the most important public policy issue of our time. And with all the noise about the alternative plans and what they claim they will do about the deficit and US debt, it was incumbent on him as a professional to do his homework first, not rush off and publish a contrarian article intended (I suppose) to show his non-partisanship on the issue. Time and again US journalists have failed miserably in their job, from the consequesnces of the Bush tax cuts to the invasion of Iraq to the citizenship of Obama. In any other profession the journalists would have lost their licenses. All of us lament that the public isn't better informed about major public policy issues. But how can we expect the public to be better informed when "respected" journalists do such a lousy job.
- rayward
April 21, 2011 at 1:08pm
Great post rayward.
- WandreyCer
April 21, 2011 at 1:09pm
"here’s what we’re trying to get, spending cuts and controls to get spending under control because that’s the problem and economic growth and job creation." Does this sound like Palin talking points to anyone else? It's sloganizing and repeating the same points over and over again and then throwing in a couple of nice buzz-words. But there's no THERE there. The reality behind his policies DO NOT get "spending under control", spending is NOT the problem, we've got historically LOW tax rates and we STILL don't get "economic growth" and "job creation". I agree with Rayward -- letting that blizzard of sound-bites go by without a challenge is irresponsible journalism.
- AllanL5
April 21, 2011 at 2:00pm
I read Ryan's response a few times and it seems like he threw a bunch of supply-side talking points in the air, and grabbed them as they fell into a mish-mash of slogans. To somewhat defend Bob Schieffer, having seen journalists have people like Ryan and McConnell and Cantor on these shows it is an impossible task to get them to speak in anything but slogans and non-sequitars when the question of revenue comes in regards to the deficit. They just plug in one of the following or like Ryan a mish-mash of them: 1. We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. 2. We can't raise taxes on small businesses. 3. Taxing job creators in this economy would be one the worst things in the world. So the answers to the questions do not match the questions at all.
- MikeB.
April 21, 2011 at 2:17pm
"And rather than acknowledge that he would end Medicare and Medicaid as entitlement programs, he insists against all evidence that free market forces will make the programs stronger than ever:" Question for Chaitless ---- In what competitve market does Gov control lower costs and improve quality more than market forces? Telecom --- No Airlines and Transportation ---- No Computers & Consumer Electronics --- No Energy --- No Automobile Insurance --- No Life Insurance --- No Retail --- No Chaitless? Chaitless? Bueller? Health Insurance market is non-competitve in a variety of dimensions -- starting with who makes the buying choice (not end-customers) and extending to inability to sell across state lines. Make it competitve, and create a very small and focused Gov program for very high risk.
- mr_rationale
April 21, 2011 at 2:28pm
Ray, you get the gold star for the week.
- tmmats
April 21, 2011 at 2:30pm
Energy (Electricity) -- yes, trying to deregulate it led to Enron Medicare -- yes, lowest overhead of any Health-Insurance General Motors -- Yes, Government control has led to a profitable company. Financial -- Fannie-Mae is the only institution STILL making home loans. Profitably. -- Not to mention that the TARP has prevented Great Depression II. Social Security -- a managed retirement plan with very low overhead and guaranteed benefits. So there's quite a few situations where Government regulation and oversight lowers costs and improves quality more than market-forces.
- AllanL5
April 21, 2011 at 2:55pm
I agree with rayward too. Reaganomics and the Bush II tax cuts have done serious damage to our country and the mainstream press has done nothing to prevent it. Oh, you will get the occasional "how can you lower taxes in light of the deficit," but that's it. No intelligent follow up.
- Nusholtz
April 21, 2011 at 3:49pm
Krugman adds, "Um, how can you lavish praise on a supposed long-term budget proposal without, you know, asking whether its long-run spending projections make sense?" Here's a big way: Journalists put way way too much weight on getting it first and fast over getting it right. It's a profoundly harmful thing about their culture. He didn't have time (or perhaps expertise, but that's another issue) to fully analyze the plan, but he felt great pressure to weigh in fast, while the issue was hot, while everyone else was. And as far as technical expertise and help, it's expensive, and has ginormous uncompensated positive externalities. Our media needs so much help and subsidization of it's monumental positive externalities.
- RHSerlin
April 21, 2011 at 10:50pm
Pursuant to AllanL5 - no doubt Republicans would be aghast at the thought - but the EU and other nations have been successful, in some cases, with outright nationalization of key industries, and/or substantial government support for them. We, on the other hand, don't have subsidies for industries and corporations that fail, such as Lockheed. Right? PS I have about had it with the "job creators," due to the fact that they have taken good jobs and turned them into McDonald's jobs, by the gazillions.
- Sophia
April 22, 2011 at 1:17am