I saw this morning that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., the GOP’s new rock-star youngster, has begun a media blitz to sell his austere new budget to the public. Joe Scarborough, practically drooling on himself in awe of Ryan’s cojones, was glad that a politician had finally put forward a “serious,” “bold,” and “courageous” proposal for dealing with the nation’s debt and deficit. I, too, was ecstatic. Not because I agree with much of anything that Ryan has included in the proposal but because the bill so clearly exposes the true Republican agenda: massive regressive tax cuts for the rich and systematic dismantling of the federal government’s safety net. Grover Norquist should be proud. Ryan’s government would indeed be small enough to “drag into the bathroom and drown in the bathtub.”
A quick look at the bill unveils the extent of Ryan’s ambitions. He proposes to eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, repeal the recently passed Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, convert Medicaid from a matching fund program to federal block-grants indexed to inflation (disregarding the fact that health care grows at more than twice the rate of inflation), cut back on Pell Grants, repeal the Obama health care law, privatize Medicare, cut federal income taxes for corporations and the richest Americans from 35% to 25%, and support an energy policy that greatly expands offshore drilling in American waters. Even more alarming is that part of his proposal would require a two-thirds vote to increase taxes, giving a Republican minority the ability to veto any attempt to increase revenue, regardless of their numbers.
Conservative pundits are particularly impressed with Ryan because his budget tackles entitlements, the suicidal third rail of politics. When polled, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are hugely popular, but they are also fiscally unsustainable and eat up about 40% of total government spending. The $31 billion that Rep. Boehner and Sen. Reid are currently sparring over for the rest of the current year’s budget is chump change compared to the entitlement behemoths. While everyone in Washington acknowledges that reform is necessary, few have been brave enough to propose serious cuts.
But Ryan’s proposal shouldn’t be celebrated. Unlike other serious proposals to tackle the nation’s fiscal problems (i.e., the President’s Simpson-Bowles commission), Ryan doesn’t want to balance the budget with a mixture of increased taxes and spending cuts. He doesn’t want to seriously tackle defense spending or close tax loopholes for outrageously wealthy corporations. No, he wants to gut the federal government by eliminating or fatally reforming the programs that sustain the poor, disabled, and elderly and transfer that wealth to the richest individuals and corporations. It is as if we are entering a time machine and returning to the Gilded Age when the ultra-rich Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies, and Vanderbilt controlled the economy and pulled the strings in Washington. Only this time the Republicans are trying to effectively neuter the labor unions before they can fight back against the corporate goliaths and their corpulent investors.
While Ryan and the Republicans frame their budget as a serious attempt to “save” the entitlement programs, any diligent observer can see that they are merely trying to finish what Republicans began in the 1980s: destroy the social safety net, dismantle the federal government, and concentrate the power and wealth in the hands of the few. The Republican establishment is not the champion of the middle class but the guardian of the rich.
What America needs is the exact opposite of what Ryan is proposing: a robust, accountable, and modern government. A prosperous and competitive 21st century is going to require massive amounts of investment in modern infrastructure, high-speed rails and efficient public transportation, clean energy, world-class schools, urban revitalization, and yes, a strong social safety net.
Ryan’s plan needs to be seen for what it is, a massive redistribution of wealth from the have-nots to the rich, a systematic and unprecedented dismantling of the federal programs that help those that need it most. It is an obscene and radical leap backwards, not a step forwards.
We need to wake up and abandon our smug delusions of American exceptionalism. The rest of the world is leaving us behind.
No comments:
Post a Comment