| | Ask most Republican politicians what they stand for, and they'll quickly pledge allegiance to the principles of limited government, restrained federal spending, and fiscal responsibility. But follow up and ask what policies are needed to achieve these goals, and the answers don't come as easily. In fact, to date, only one GOP legislator has drafted a comprehensive plan to cut spending, eliminate the deficit, and balance the federal budget.
Rep. Paul Ryan from Wisconsin is an energetic, wonky conservative who, at 40, has made it his mission to "fix the country's fiscal problem." And he's put forward a way to do so—a way that, at least in theory, could actually work. Ryan comes from a family of industrial earth-movers—the business, now run by his cousins, was started by his grandfather, and he helped out as a kid. They clear away obstructions so new foundations can be laid. And that's Ryan's goal, not just for the GOP, but eventually, he hopes, for the rest of America.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which produces Congress's official projections about the long-term fiscal effects of legislation, Ryan's Roadmap for America’s Future would zero out the deficit, balance the budget by 2063, and reduce Medicare's expected share of the economy in 2080 from a projected 14.3 percent of GDP to a mere 4 percent. The Roadmap also calls for a substantial simplification of the tax code and a replacement of the corporate income tax with an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. CBO's projections are inherently uncertain—even the most competent economic forecasters can only guess at how the world will change over 50-plus years. But the result is, at the very least, a compelling conservative vision of the country's fiscal future.
In other words, it's a thoroughly radical idea. But talk to Ryan about the plan, and he'll insist that, despite all evidence to the contrary, drastic as it sounds, the American people are ready for it. "They know the fiscal situation's bad," he tells NEWSWEEK. "They know this debt is wrong. They know we've got a problem." Yet despite its concerns about the deficit, the public is also deeply attached to Social Security and Medicare.
And that's why Republicans are so skittish about Ryan's plan. Indeed, it's not clear that many of his fellow GOP legislators are willing to sign up for Ryan's hard-core brand of fiscal responsibility. Electorally, his plan may be more of a problem for the GOP than a solution. To date, his proposal, which is actually an update of a plan he initially put forth in 2008, has a mere nine cosponsors—mostly conservative stalwarts. A number of prominent Republicans, including presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty and House Minority Leader John Boehner, have explicitly declined to support the proposal. At the same time, GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell, Michael Steele, and Newt Gingrich have all released statements staunchly opposing cuts to Medicare—the same sort of cuts that are crucial to Ryan's plan.
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... Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, says that Ryan's plan offers "one of the few serious plans in Washington." Yet he worries that "it is far too serious for today's Republicans."
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... Asked about the barriers his own party has erected to entitlement reform, [Ryan's] response is a boilerplate dodge that begins, "I think we need to get beyond the old politics." Yet in the Republican Party, the old politics of pandering to seniors and posturing about unnamed spending cuts still rules. "The Ryan Roadmap is a test," says Cato's Tanner, "and right now the Republican Party is failing it." | |
