So much has happened in the last three years that it seems like much longer since Democrats thought they could use a backlash against a budget proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan to take back control of the House of Representatives. The trial case was a special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district in which a Democrat took a seat previously held by the Republicans in May of 2011. That race was somewhat misleading since the GOP candidate was hobbled by the presence of a false flag Tea Party candidate on the ballot and Republicans took the seat back the following year. But though the campaign strategy of portraying the House budget chair and his fellow party members pushing grandparents over the cliff never really caught fire elsewhere, Democrats are still enamored of the theme and apparently will try again this year in the wake of Ryan’s latest proposal which will be passed today by his committee.
The headline in the New York Times article on the budget summed up the Democratic approach: “Ryan Budget Would Cut Food Stamps and Medicaid Deeply.” The point of that piece as well as the first salvos from the left is that the GOP is attempting to punish the poor while increasing defense spending and cutting taxes for the wealthy. In a year in which President Obama has sought to distract the public from his domestic and foreign policy failures by claiming that income inequality is the country’s biggest problem, the Ryan budget is perfect fodder for administration talking points helpfully doled out by liberal outlets like the Times. As Politico notes, just as they tried unsuccessfully to do in the last election cycle, Democrats hope they can use Ryan to propel them to victory in 2014.
But while the Wisconsin congressman and 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate may seem like an all-purpose piñata custom designed to boost Democratic fundraising and turnout, Ryan’s serious attempt to deal with the nation’s long-term debt problem is not be quite the gift they think it is. Though Ryan’s effort presents Democrats with a target to shoot at, it also demonstrates again that there is only one political party that is actually thinking about how to deal with the country’s long-term problems and it is not the one headed by Barack Obama.
As he did with his previous budget proposals, Ryan does what pundits are always asking Congress to do and actually addresses the country’s budget dilemma and tries to provide a solution. While Democrats are grandstanding about the plight of the poor while proposing ideas like increasing the minimum wage that do more to hurt employment and the needy than help them, Ryan is seeking an answer to the question of how to actually create a new approaching to governing that is not based on kicking the can down the road. His approach to social welfare spending is not, contrary to the mischaracterizations of his opponents, to end them but to reform programs like Medicaid in such a manner as to make them viable in the long term and to provide individual with more choices and control over their coverage. Those government expenditures that he rightly wishes to eliminate are liberal playgrounds such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other frills that may please some people but are not the responsibility of government.
The key to his proposal is an effort to cut the “autopilot spending and interest payments” — what he rightly calls the “drivers of our debt.” The point is, unless we address entitlement spending head on, the country’s out-of-control taxing and spending will sink the nation in a sea of red ink that will ensure that promises of future benefits will only be kept by a crippling tax bill that will burden future generations and undermine chances for economic growth. What Ryan is offering the country is reform, not the promises of more government largesse paid for by taxing the rich that is the staple of administration rhetoric. The choice here is not between more help for the poor and a defense of the rich, as liberals would have it, but between an attempt at solving an unsustainable debt problem and a desire to ignore that problem. Ryan’s approach may not be perfect but in attacking him in this manner for having the chutzpah to present a serious proposal for changing the way Washington does business, Democrats are proving once again that they are the status quo party that is unwilling to take a hard look at how to address the nation’s spending addiction.
Ryan’s willingness to present his ideas even though there is no chance that a Democrat-controlled Senate will adopt them provides the president’s party with an opportunity to demagogue the issues. But it also proves that in the competition for ideas, Democrats would rather be the party mired in the past rather than the one that seeks a path to a growing economy unburdened by debt. In a midterm election driven more by concern over bumbling Democrat projects like ObamaCare, which increase the debt and the size of the government, that might not be as smart a strategy as they think it, is.
