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Barack Obama Domestic issues Fiscal Crisis Politics The Opinionsphere

Paul Ryan’s America

 

[reddit-me]Paul Ryan launched an attack on Barack Obama’s deficit speech last week — calling it “excessively partisan.”

Which is interesting considering his own approach to the budget deficit which he called “an existential threat to all we hold dear”: Balance the budget without offending a single Republican.

Over a year ago, I described the conundrum Republicans faced as the deficit they were fuming against was largely a result of policies that benefited their own constituencies. Those over 55 who were the only demographic group to vote Republican (even in the Democratic wave years of 2006 and 2008) benefited the most from the trillion dollars spend on Medicare and Social Security. Our military spending nearly matched the rest of the world’s combined — and if you include other national security spending — totaling another trillion. And then there were the various tax incentives and loopholes for big corporations adding up to another few hundred billion dollars. Further, Republicans were committed to not raising taxes on anyone — especially the richest.

Paul Ryan was faced with the unenviable task of squaring this circle. In an effort that nearly everyone described as “serious,” Ryan managed to put forth a plan with no prospect of passing at all — and one that managed to place the entire burden of balancing the budget on the backs of Democratic constituencies. The military was left alone. The base of the Republican party and driver of most of the debt — the elderly — was left alone. Corporations were rewarded with a lower tax rate with some vague talk of eliminating their enormous tax subsidies.

Though Ryan kept saying the pain of balancing the budget would be shared by everyone — his plan was really about cutting off support for those left behind in our society. The rich and elderly were rewarded — even as they accumulate more and more of the nation’s wealth; the middle class were mainly left alone; and the young and the poor were cut off.

That doesn’t sound like the path to a dynamic and prosperous society to me.

Paul Ryan’s future is one where my generation must be prepared to support our parents as they become the test subjects in the biggest social experiment in history: As Medicare becomes a voucher program growing at much lower than the rate of health care inflation, in the hopes that this will slow it down. Meanwhile, my generation must be saving more than any generation in history as we prepare to pay for our own medical costs.

Ryan’s plan is many things:  If taken seriously, it is an attack on all non-Republican constituencies. If implemented, it would be a grand ideological experiment that barely considers the lives of those it would affect which Republicans would normally call “social engineering.”

But most of all, the Ryan plan is (as Slate‘s John Dickerson said in Friday’s Political Gabfest), a “bold negotiating position.”

[Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore licensed under Creative Commons.]

 

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Humor

Drew-bait

The Daily Mail reported over the weekend that a recent study found that left-handers don’t do as well as right-handers in school, but earn more than 5% more every hour once they leave school. This is Drew-bait because an acquaintance of mine who we will for the moment call Drew, but who will remain otherwise anonymous, has a burning hatred for lefties and their sinister ways.

Oddly though, to illustrate this article, The Daily Mail inexplicably chose Robert Redford in his box office bomb The Horse Whisperer.

Let me suggest instead three other prominent lefties who have been in the news recently:

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Election 2008 Giuliani New York City Obama Politics The Clintons

Hillary running to be president…of 9/11

Ben Smith at the Politico also picked up on one of my observations from my post about last night’s debate:

Hillary… brought up 9/11, more or less unprompted, three times so far in the debate, a level not seen since Rudy Giuliani dropped out in January.

The three examples:

“For Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been just intolerable for me.”

Later:

“If I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York and, I would hope, to every American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn’t done more.”

And:

“I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today, he made light of 9/11, and said that he’s not even sure it happened and that people actually died.”

She’s not at the “a noun, a verb, and 9/11” level yet – but then she just started playing this card last night…