Finally, it appears that at least some conservatives are not going to continue down the path of talk radio approved, cultural resentment, but instead are going to argue for actual conservative policies. Republicans leaders thus far have been good at pretending like they care about cutting the deficit (see populist anger towards earmarks and raising the debt ceiling), but it was all a show. Now Ryan, Daniels, and Christie are changing the dynamic.
Notice how Ryan's measured conservatism avoids overreach. He doesn't want to deal with Social Security yet. He shouldn't. It is going to take a tremendous amount of effort to reform Medicare, and it needs the most reforming of all of the entitlement programs. He also doesn't want to completely scrap Medicare (or the rest of the entitlement programs). Neither should he. The goal of the conservative movement ought to be about making small government more efficient and better affordable. It ought not to be anti-government.
You can contrast Ryan's approach with the President's. According to Politico,
Administration officials believe Ryan’s aggressive strategy plays directly into their hands, as they hope Republicans will overreach and alienate the public with efforts to rewire popular safety-net programs.
“We’re going to be trying to draw them out and say, ‘You guys need to have a plan,’” a senior administration official told POLITICO on Monday when the president’s budget was released.
6 comments:
"Finally, it appears that at least some conservatives are not going to continue down the path of talk radio approved, cultural resentment, but instead are going to argue for actual conservative policies." Haha, when was the last time you actually listened to talk radio?
The tough issues like Medicare, medicade, and Social Security will sepeperate the men from the boys.
Good for Paul Ryan. I'm glad Palin endorsed his Roadmap.
40 cents out of every dollar the government spends is borrowed, and we pay accrued interest on that 40 cents.
The discretionary spending of the government, humongous as it is, is still only 16 or 17% of the total budget, so if it were entirely eliminated, we'd still be borrowing a lot of money that we'd be paying compound interest on for generations.
At projected rates of spending, by 2020, we will be spending $1 Trillion a year just on interest payments on the debt.
Of course, what would happen before then is that people would stop loaning us money or charging us far higher rates of interest......or the economy would collapse under the burden.
Solving the problem, and preventing the ensuing chaos of NOT solving the problem, requires major entitlement reform. It also means educating the public about the scope of the danger.
Godspeed to Ryan and his quest.
I like Paul Ryan. I hope he can lead Republicans into making the tough choices that need to be made.
If they don't do what they were sent there to do, they better not invest in DC real estate.
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