No Op-ed today as it'sCartoon Sunday...
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Sunday, August 12, 2012
When you think of Republican congressman Paul Ryan, terms like earnest, serious, and important come to mind. So does the term old-fashioned. Ryan comes from an old-fashioned place, the blue-collar town of Janesville, Wisconsin. He cherishes the old-fashioned values of a faithful family man. He even looks old-fashioned, with his white shirts and striped ties. And he uses old-fashioned argument skills, persuasively weaving big-picture themes with the numbers that back them up.
And Ryan has old-fashioned goals, too,
like saving America from fiscal bankruptcy, economic stagnation, and a
European-style entitlement state.
“Just look at what happened across the
Atlantic,” Ryan told me in a year-end interview. “We have to avoid that.
We must reclaim our founding principles of economic freedom and free
markets. We must preserve the American Idea.”
With this vision, and with a pro-growth budget framework called “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” Ryan’s serious ideas have seriously gotten under President Obama’s skin.
In a White House meeting this year,
Ryan’s superior knowledge of health care baffled Obama and left him
speechless. And the serious Ryan budget, which lowers spending by $6.2
trillion and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion over ten years, totally
outflanked the White House. It embarrassingly exposed the Obama
administration’s flimsy and inconsequential 2012 budget, which even
rejected the findings of Obama’s own Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission.
(Another Oval Office embarrassment.)
And when Ryan unveiled his first Medicare-reform package, which featured patient-centered consumer choice
and market competition, the White House went nuts. Team Obama whipped
up a Mediscare panic, resorting to a fictional caricature of Ryan
forcing old ladies off a cliff. But the charge that the Ryan plan “ends
Medicare” couldn’t be further from the truth. The website PolitiFact
labeled this “the lie of the year.”
Ryan later amended his Medicare reform to
keep the existing system as an option, and bolstered it with a menu of
market-based private insurance plans to promote cost-cutting choice and
competition. But he did so with the bipartisan support of Sen. Ron
Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. How did the White House react? It went
rhetorically ballistic, although it couldn’t put together a serious
response.
No, Ryan’s reforms didn’t quite resonate
in the White House. But they did force a serious debate about domestic
policy and the economy throughout the country. With his comprehensive
budget of deep spending cuts, entitlement reform, and tax simplification
-- a plan that would strictly limit government and unleash growth at
the same time -- Ryan became the most influential Republican of his
younger generation. Quite likely, he became the most influential thinker
in today’s GOP. For these reasons, Paul Ryan has been chosen as the Human Events Man of the Year.
The Ryan “Path to Prosperity” budget
passed the House this past spring. In effect, it became Republican
policy. Unfortunately, things went downhill after that.
The summer debt-ceiling crisis produced a
meager $1 trillion in spending restraint, way below the Ryan goals.
Then the Supercommittee, which couldn’t even produce a policy, fell back
on the trigger of another $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts. And
now the year is ending in a chaotic and unserious gridlock over the
temporary extension of a temporary payroll tax holiday that has no
economic-growth content and ultimately would blow more holes in the
Social Security trust fund and the overall budget. A disappointed Ryan
told me, “Tea Party enthusiasm hasn’t yet translated into the kind of
reforms we need. One-third of the government has only limited political
power.” He added that the 2011 budget narrative shows “the total
un-seriousness of the left in tackling problems.”
Nevertheless, the Republican budget
leader is an eternal optimist. He believes “there is a shift to the
right” in the country, “toward free-market approval.” He sees evidence
that “We are winning this debate.” He says, “The country will not accept
a permanent class of technocrats that will diminish freedom, enhance
crony capitalism, and allow the economy to enter some sort of managed
decline.” Ryan talks about “reclaiming founding principles,” and about
“fighting paternalistic, arrogant, and condescending government elites
who want to equalize outcomes, create new entitlement rights, and
promote less self-government by the citizenry.”
In other words, Rep. Paul Ryan is
offering a completely different vision than the one Obama outlined in
his Osawatomie, Kansas, campaign speech in early December. Ryan wants
“the right to rise,” not a third wave of liberal progressivism. He wants
to stop Obama’s attempt to add to the New Deal/Great Society with the
statist universal-health-care program called Obamacare and an effective
nationalization of the energy and financial sectors. And he completely
rejects Obama’s divisive, big-government, punish-wealth, tax-the-rich
leftist populism.
“A ruling system of big business, big
government, and big-government unions does violence to the notion of
entrepreneurial capitalism,” Ryan told me. “Whether it’s TARP, Fannie or
Freddie, cap-and-trade, or Obamacare, this must be stopped.” Ryan
stands against what he calls “the moral endgame to equalize outcomes.”
He says: “No consolidation of power into a permanent political class.
Equality of opportunity, not result.”
Drawing from the Declaration of
Independence, Ryan believes that individual citizen power in a democracy
comes from God and natural rights, not government. And he believes
these natural rights flow directly to the people. It complements what
Reagan always said: Government works for the people, the people don’t
work for government.
The congressman calls himself a
second-generation supply-sider, flowing from his mentor Jack Kemp. He
knows that growth incentives work, and that our tax system should reward
success, not penalize it. Ryan frequently notes that Obama’s vision
would raise federal tax rates toward 50 percent, which doesn’t even
include increasing state and local tax burdens. Countering this, the
Ryan roadmap features a modified flat tax, with two brackets and a 25
percent top rate.
But Ryan also believes that under the
threat of fiscal insolvency, supply-side tax cuts must be accompanied by
entitlement reform, deep spending cuts, and an end to corporate
welfare. Rounding out his policy proposals, the budget chief wants the
Federal Reserve to move to a single mandate for price stability and a
stable dollar.
So, many have asked, why didn’t the
intellectual and policy leader of the GOP run for president? His
supporters continue this drumbeat, with many hoping for a deadlocked
convention in August, and the emergence of an optimistic, pro-growth,
center-right man with a clear vision to save the country.
Well, here comes the old-fashioned Ryan, a
man who’s interested in policy, not personal ambition. He also has to
help raise his young family. He and his wife Janna have two boys aged
seven and eight and a girl aged nine. He’s been teaching his
nine-year-old Liza how to shoot a .243 light-caliber Remington 700
bolt-action hunting rifle. The weekend before Christmas, he took his
crew to Medieval Times on the North Shore of Chicago, where they watched
knights on horseback jousting with each other while eating a little
junk food. Family is clearly more important right now than presidential
ambition.
So would he become OMB director in a
Republican administration? “I don’t think about it,” he said. But for
the 2012 election, Ryan has a political vision: Republicans must develop
and communicate a clear policy agenda along the lines of his “Path to
Prosperity.” Then, should they win, the GOP can use this agenda to
govern effectively.
“Reagan had this right,” Ryan told me.
For the congressman from Wisconsin, it’s the American Idea. That’s
Ryan’s vision. And the Republican party better take notice, because this
election could be America’s last chance for a very long time.
[Editor's note: This column originally ran on December 23, 2011]
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Paul Ryan: Where Things Stand
by Erick Erickson (Diary) / RedStateWhat they had been doing was not and is not working.
Paul Ryan works. The most recently named Human Events Conservative of the Year is a lightening rod on the left for the Ryan plan, which balances the budget over the next two decades. What was not enough for some conservatives is too much for some liberals. Paul Ryan exposes the left’s great lie. They think they can just raise taxes on those who make $250,000.00 a year or more and never have to cut spending or fix entitlements.
Paul Ryan not only exposes that lie, but he has plans to solve it. He does so as a fresh, young face who is not at all scary to old people and relates to them and to young people. He himself is in his early 40′s with small kids. He’s from a swing state, out performed John McCain in his home district, and is telegenic and articulate. Paul Ryan is what Mitt Romney needs.
The left will demonize and demagogue Paul Ryan. They’d do that to anyone. This is a party that is currently accusing MItt Romney of murder and previously accused Paul Ryan of killing old people. The only problem is, the old people are receptive to Paul Ryan’s message. The bluster you hear today is a Democratic Party excited to have their bogey man as the Republican veep pick, with a little bit of nervous apprehension about what Ryan is capable of.
The sighs you hear are Republicans sighing some relief. Finally, the Romney campaign has a spokesman who can do what Mitt Romney has never been capable of doing — defend success and articulate a message of why we must reform our nation’s budget and support free markets.
After all the Romney campaign missteps and flubs of the past few weeks, I am encouraged. But we should be clear here: it is not enough, but it is an excellent start to a reboot.
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