Full disclosure: I'm a fiscal conservative who thinks it's imperative that we get serious about establishing a glidepath toward budget balance, or at least near-balance, over the next few years. So you might expect that I would be happy to see Paul Ryan gain a prominent place in the arena of public-policy discussion, since he is saying a lot of things -- at least in terms of raw generalities -- that need to be said. However, when you try to do a little drilldown on some of the policy details he's proferred so far, you hit a soft underbelly. Since I want to see a
real debate, absent of the sort of unsupportable claims and disingenuous demagoguery usually seen in the political world, I'm disappointed.
I guess I shouldn't be. After all, Ryan voted for, among other things, the expensive and unpaid-for prescription drug entitlement expansion of 2003. Like nearly everyone else in congress, he's a go-along-to-get-along politician.
Take a look at what a
real conservative (not a faux "pseudo-conservative") has to say about the Ryan plan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/op...=1&ref=opinion
The author is David Stockman, who you will probably remember as Reagan's budget director during his first term. Then a 34-year-old former congressman, Stockman came in full of fire and fury, ready to trim back the growing excesses of the welfare state while cutting taxes. Since he fought the same battle thirty years ago that Ryan promises today, he knows whereof he speaks.
The simple fact is that none of it adds up.
If Biden were smarter, more knowledgeable, and more responsible, perhaps he would have been able to make the same case Stockman did instead of just responding with partisan talking points and silly talk. For instance, one thing Biden said was that $800 billion (over ten years) of the Bush tax cuts went to taxpayers earning "a minimum" of $1 million annually. What?!? That's not even remotely close to being accurate. Why did virtually none of the media "fact-checkers" call him out on that?
Another thing he said was that the $831 billion fiscal "stimulus" package of 2009 was "exactly what we needed" to avoid "going off the cliff." Huh?? There's not a shred of credible evidence that that's the case, or that it produced more than a small percentage of the economic growth and "job creation" benefits claimed by its supporters.
The U.S. economy is caught in a slow-growth trap from which there's no easy escape, and the problem has been exacerbated by the extreme fiscal irresponsibilty of two presidents and congresses of both parties over the past ten years. Yet there's been virtually no substantive discussion of how to bring about
real reform and reduce systemic risk in the financial system, not to mention the obvious distortions created by years of monetary policy that creates a virtually unprecedented level of interest rate manipulation. Neither party's "leaders" have done so much as lift a finger in an effort to enact
real reform. That's not a surprise. After all, they're honest politicians -- at least in the sense that when they get bought, they
stay bought!
It would be quite refreshing to hear a candidate tell us what we
need to hear, not just what we
want to hear.
But that is, of course, a sure-fire way to lose in a landslide!
The VP Debate: Lies, Exaggerations, or Disingenuity?
Pickle
