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GOP Rides Paul Ryan’s Road to Ruin (But Will Dems Blow Opportunity?)
His snake oil-castor oil budget is a gift to Dems, but only if they give up on "grand bargains" with extremists
Most Democrats rejoiced when the newly elected House Tea Party extremists got behind Paul Ryan’s tax-slashing and program-cutting budget plan almost a year ago. The budget had no chance of passing the Senate, but it committed Republicans to unpopular spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, and continued the party’s slavish devotion to tax protection for the top 1 percent. That’s why many liberals were horrified by reports that the White House was entertaining comparable budget-cutting proposals to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis last summer. Not only was it bad policy, it was terrible politics, sacrificing the huge advantage Republicans had conceded when they backed Ryan’s plan, especially his assault on Medicare.
Paul Ryan's budget plan will lead GOP to electoral ruin, argues Walsh, but only if Democrats don't repeat past mistakes. (Credit: AP)
The debt ceiling “grand bargain” failed. President Obama learned from the debacle and switched his focus to job growth from deficit-cutting. But the Ryan plan, with its political benefits for Democrats, also receded from the front pages. Until now, that is. Ryan brazenly released the 2013 version of his budget Tuesday morning. It’s a cocktail of snake oil and castor oil. It proposes $1.028 trillion in discretionary spending, less than the $1.047 trillion spending cap established by the debt-ceiling deal, repeals Obamacare, and cuts the top individual tax rate and the corporate rate as well. It aims to replace Medicare with a voucher plan again. Ryan says all of the GOP presidential candidates are down with his budget proposal. “I have spoken to all of these guys and they believe we are going in the right direction,” he told reporters. That’s great news for Democrats.
Unfortunately, the new Ryan plan comes on the heels of bad news from the Washington Post: a closely reported story about last summer’s debt-ceiling negotiations, which brought back the bad old days when the president was indulging the ideas of Ryan and friends to avoid defaulting on our credit obligations while also becoming the champion of fiscal prudence.
If you believe the Post’s reporting – its slant places most blame for the deal’s troubles on Democrats, but the key facts come from participants’ notes, emails and on the record recollections – the “deal” Obama entertained was worse than anything reported at the time: $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, reduced cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and an unspecified hike in the Medicare eligibility age, in exchange for around $800 billion in “revenue” that relied on closing “loopholes” and (possibly) increased tax receipts thanks to an improved economy, while actually lowering top rates. What finally scuttled the deal was the work of the so-called Gang of Six – three senators from each party, whose proposal contained much bigger tax hikes and revenue increases, plus smaller spending cuts, than the Obama team had negotiated.
“I don’t think it was a mischaracterization on our part to say we’d be beat up miserably by Democrats who thought we got out-negotiated,” former White House chief of staff Bill Daley told the Post. The Gang of Six deal forced the embarrassed White House to ratchet up its tax-hike demands, and the bargain fell apart – but not before Obama reportedly called Boehner and offered to take the horrible pre-Gang of Six, no-tax-hike deal. The most ominous line in the entire piece: “White House officials said this week that the offer is still on the table.”
Let’s hope that’s not true. The Obama White House made a convincing pivot back to economic growth after its summer humiliation. I’m a big believer in forgiving, if not forgetting. We’ve all made mistakes. New York’s Jonathan Chait wrote about the Post piece Monday with surprising outrage, given his many essays chastising liberals and progressives for being too hard on the president. “Obama’s disastrous weakness in the summer of 2011 went further toward undermining liberalism than anybody previously knew,” he railed. I think a lot of us knew it, even if we didn’t have the ugliest details, and we tried to tell Chait at the time. But I’m ready to let bygones be bygones.
Democrats are being given another gift with the new Ryan budget, especially given its new assault on Medicare. I don’t care what Politifact or Rep. Ron Wyden (who co-sponsored Medicare cuts with Ryan) try to say: By giving seniors vouchers to purchase insurance on the private market, the plan would abolish Medicare. Because let’s be clear: Vouchers aren’t Medicare. In fact, Republicans and private insurers tried for years to create a program for elderly Americans that would run as a voucher plan, or otherwise funnel seniors into private insurance; in 1965 Democrats under Lyndon B. Johnson rejected that route in favor of a federal government-run program they called “Medicare.” The GOP is against it, plain and simple. (Ryan and Wyden’s plan would supposedly allow seniors who chose to to stay in a government-run plan, but how long would that hybrid exist? And how much would it cost; Medicare’s main efficiencies come from the fact that all seniors participate.)
Democrats need to stop sabotaging themselves and undermining their party’s signature accomplishments, including Medicare. The program needs reforms, but they will not be accomplished as long as the extremist wing of the GOP is in control. I think the president learned that the hard way, and I trust he’ll remember the lesson.
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66 Comments so far
Show AllIt should be clear by now the Republican budget IS the Democratic budget. The Democrats are simply lying about what they're going to do.
"Perry logan"
Exactly.
The most laughably unfunny line in this article is when we are told "Let's Hope" in regard to the democrats.
A person has to be pathetically gullible, sadistic, or masochistic to support the republicans, the democrats, or the libertarians.
This article demonstrates the severity of Joan Walsh's denial syndrome.
"The debt ceiling grand bargain" did NOT "fail" as Walsh alleges. Obama adopted it as part of his agenda and it will resurface as soon as Obama's "convincing pivot back to economic gowth" (lol) ends when he is re-elected on November 6, 2012.
"Obama learned from the debacle" that there is no limit to the BS Obamabots will swallow.
Obama's serial collaboration with the GOP for the past four years has proven that whatever the most rightward wing of the GOP is proposing this year will become part of Obama's agenda next year.
Walsh is about as consistent a shill for the Dems as you'll ever find. At least she does note how Obama predictably caved on this budget deal with the Repugs, as he does on every single issue out there. But that's OK, Walsh wants to "let bygones be bygones," exactly how Obamabots always respond to his serial betrayals. Obama proves to these liberals every day how he is anything BUT a liberal, but they can't shake that infatuation they still have for him. He'll come through. Just give him another 20 years or so.
The takeaway from Walsh's piece is that Ryan's plan of protracted greed and theft on behalf of the 1% is a "gift" to the Dems, who will work over the next 4 years to craft a budget that includes only 90% or so of the Ryan budget. They'll cave on everything Ryan's goons demand, drawing the line on parts of Medicare and Social Security perhaps, to make it look like they're heroically defending FDR era reforms. That's enough for Walsh and her vaguely liberal cohort at MSNBC. The important thing is keeping the phony-ass Obama in office, and then replacing him in 2016 with an even phonier Democrat. Gotta keep Wall Street happy!
Obama will have dragged the nation down so far by 2016 that no Democrat will stand a chance. Santorum will become the US's first ayatollah, disguised as its president.
Obama has proven that rather than "giving up on grand bargains with extremists", those bargains will be the brightest light in his legacy. Recall Obama's Cheshire Cat grin when he announced on the day after the 2010 elections (when the GOP took control of the House) how he was "looking forward to greater bipartisanship" which is Obamaspeak for shifting his agenda ever rightward.
You're exactly right. Obama's perpetual capitulation to the far right, disguised as bipartisanship, will gain him more enemies than even Bush had by 2008. Of course all that should have been obvious to all sentient beings for the past 4 years. But there are many Greg R's around to parrot the crap coming from Walsh and her MSNBC and HuffPo cronies. So the tall thin smooth-talking grinning liar will occupy the Oval Orifice for another term, and after he turns the whole shebang over to the rightwing Christian Taliban, they will appoint their favorite medieval dictator to the high throne, most likely Santorum. From either side of the duopoly aisle, we have nothing ahead but a full-blown fascist police state.
Obama will win on the ostrich vote.
We can push democrats to do better, or we can watch things devolve faster. I truly wish there was another alternative, but there is not. Humanity is not smart enough. We are only one step up from the chimpanzee after all.
Speak for yourself.
It's always amazing to me to watch humans, ironically, defame themselves. Misanthropy is just another component of the widespread assault against reason, logic, compassion, intelligence, love and solidarity. A few of the problems in this world can be found in your own misanthropic attitude.
I think you're a bit harsh, but of course I often am too. Actually I don't get the irony at all. Perhaps my brain is missing something.
"Perhaps my brain is missing something.:
-- Perhaps it is...
Why is Joan Walsh here?
Salon's Glenn Greenwald makes sense for CD, but Obama apologist Joan?
Unless the goal is to somehow get CD readers to return by infuriating them, please don't waste everyone's time. An random, unknown blogger would be far preferable.
Because we know better.
Thanks.
"But Will Dems Blow Opportunity?" Yes, because the 25% tax rate that Ryan calls for was requested by Obama in the State of the Union address. (D)s can't call out (R)s for what Obama has proposed. This new tax gift to the wealthy is being portrayed as job creation. God bless those job creators. Forget the Bush tax cuts, they expired. These are the Obama tax cuts for the wealthy.
An Obama administration would be little different from a Romney administration. The visuals and audio may be wildly different but, not much will change in America. (D)s and (R)s propose decreasing government revenue while cutting social programs - the double whammy. We are seeing a replay of Clinton's 'ending welfare as we know it' mentality on steroids.
Our leaders see SS as welfare. Really it is justification to raid the SS trust fund. At $2.5 trillion the SS trust fund is the largest line item in our national debt. "We the People" have been selected as the ones to be defaulted upon. They are planning on giving US the haircut.
The only function of government seems to be military interventionism to protect the foreign holdings of the two tenths of one percentile. They are getting our moneys worth. The wealthy just don't pay their way. Warren paid $6.9 million Federal Income Tax in 2010 on his $44 billion dollar net worth. We paid to defend his wealth. We will continue to pay to keep his wealth intact - austerity coming to US Jan 2103.
Goddammit! I see lies like this all the time from right-wing assholes and idiots. Do we have to do the same? Saying that Ryan and Obama both want a 25% tax rate is a lie. You can try and justify, dodge and quibble, but it's a fuckin' lie. A corporate rate is a hell of a lot different than an income tax rate. Please attempt fact.
'Corporations are people my friend.' Very wealthy people.
For decades I owned half a corporation. I didn't much care what the tax rate was. We occasionally allowed the corporation to show enough profit that it would pay a bit of taxes, but the real money is in the income tax rate. That's where I paid lots of taxes over the years, and gladly.
And Greg R is correct that "Obama and Ryan don't both want a 25% tax rate". They DO both want it to appear that there is a 25% tax rate while both of their "tax reform" agendas emphasize further reducing tax rates for the likes of GE and Boeing that post billions of dollars in profits each year yet not only don't pay ANY tax, and they get bigger tax credits each year (I don't need to use my calculator to know that a negative tax rate is way lower than 25%).
You are a lying piece of shit, WTF, I would suggest turning your TV off fox news, or off completely, The Ryan plan will gut Medicare! In the thirties the republicans fought tooth and nail against Social Security, said it would bankrupt America, in the sixties the republicans fought tooth and nail against Medicare and said it would bankrupt America. two years ago the republicans fought tooth and nail against health care and now are saying all social programs will bankrupt America, but want more tax breaks for the wealthy and more subsidies for corporations, at the cost of the working class and poor. These are the figures that don't add up.
We sure can't count on the DCCC (as if we ever could) They sent out a bunch of emails after the Limbaugh slut remark...asking for money but never said what they will do. Now they're jumping on the Paul Ryan proposal. Still just want money...as well as for us to take action, which we should.
Two words:
Slash DoD.
Ryan's budget plan could lead to a GOP electoral ruin, but it won't be because of Ryan's plan, it's just the type of talent they-the GOP are showing in this dog and pony show they refer to as a primary. Either way-this budget plan with sputter in the Senate. The numbers do not add up.
In Ryan's "plan" the numbers not only do not add up, they are a complete joke. Will the TV talking heads and the op-ed quill heads finally notice? Probably not.
I admire your optimism. I fear WORSE shit.
If opportunity is a Republican, a banker, a corporatist, etc. The Democrats will be lined up around the block to "blow" it.
The "Dems" have pretty consistently blown every opportunity that presents itself. The image of Nancy Pelosi grinning and fawning at Bush's elbow after the '06 midterm Democrat landslide and her ascension to speaker is still burned into my memory. This whole mess is not getting any better.
Perhaps this is your problem, madman. Why shouldn 't Nancy enjoy her moment? I think your brain has a rotten spot. Good luck with that.
"Why shouldn 't Nancy enjoy her moment?"
The sometime Speaker and I are not on a first name basis - But my own answer to your question is that, on the one hand, there's no reason in the world why Nancy shouldn't "enjoy her moment". But the issue is not "Nancy", but the Republic - and so the question that I would ask is, "Did Nancy put 'her moment' to work for Nancy, or for the Republic?" If one's answer is the former, then one can cede Nancy her human right to enjoy 'her moment' while thinking quite scathing thoughts of her for how she got "her moment" and what, having gotten it, she did with it.
Nancy lost her moment when she took impeachment off the table. Everything after that is just a postscript.
Pelosi was born into the .001% club....and protects that exclusive club at every opportunity.
Heck she constantly wears a necklace that is worth more than the average Americans yearly wage.
If we ignore her Words and instead only study she Actions she is Complicit in All the problems we face as a country.
She has Zero problem stomping the pedal to the metal, racing the car of humanity 90 mph straight at the brick wall.
She's a phony.
There's so much contradictory dreck in this article.
Obama apologist Walsh is tripping over herself trying to justify her previous apologizing and cover up her future apologizing.
The Washington Post article makes clear that Obama was BEGGING the Republicans to join him in slashing Medicare, SS and Medicaid in exchange for $800 billion in make-believe revenue from the tax cut fairy.
The Washington Post article also makes clear that when Obama informed Pelosi and Reid of his deal THEY WERE ON BOARD.
That's virtually the entire leadership of the party in favor of slashing the safety net in exchange for NOTHING.
In response to these facts Walsh says in the last paragraph:
"...Democrats need to stop sabotaging themselves and undermining their party’s signature accomplishments, including Medicare.
The very next sentence Walsh contradicts herself:
"..The program needs reforms,"...
Which is it Joan? Are you with Obama, Reid and Pelosi in support of their reelection? Or are you with Obama, Reid and Pelosi in destroying the nation's safety net?
My guess is that Walsh is in favor of both.
And if/when both come to fruition she'll start apologizing again.
Comprehensive and hilarious (or it *would* be hilarious, if not for the inevitable screwing of the 99% by the likes of Obama and Reid, with the complicity of the likes of Walsh).
Thanks!
Another hack apologist - this time from Salon instead of the Nation.
Hey kind of like the difference between the dems and the rethugs.....
The Nation fishwrap and the Salon fishwrap.
Medicare does need reform, it would do us all a great benefit if Medicare were patrolled like the occupiers so that people like the great newly elected republican governor of Florida were arrested for his company's accomplishing the largest Medicare fraud in history, but no instead he was given a political career and just paid a multi-million dollar fine. That's what the republicans are all about, Issa is just as bad, but no one is doing a god damn thing about it. Fuck republicans and their thieving at the cost of the poor and elderly!
"Medicare does need reform..."
- No, it doesn't. The rising costs of Medicare have nothing to do with the program - it has an administrative cost of around two percent. The real problem is the soaring health care costs that EVERYBODY is dealing with (in the form of soaring premiums, co-pays, and deductibles). Why are health care costs soaring? Market failure. You play right into the very hands that you claim to hate by parroting this idiotic meme that Medicare needs reform. Why do you do that? Please think a little deeper and wider....
Market failure:
The cause of the health care problem is market failure. Say whatever you like or dislike about the ‘free market’, but empirical evidence has shown us that it is not a good way to deliver health care because that is not the market’s primary purpose – which is maximizing profits. If we all drop our partisan identifications as our basis in viewing this problem, and take a look at the economics, we might find better answers to the problem.
An efficient market requires these things to work properly: For the producers to operate under conditions of perfect competition – this requires a rigorous set of conditions (perfect information, a uniform product, many sellers and buyers and freedom of entry and exit) – which secures that sellers are price takers, producing at the lowest possible cost in the long run and earning profits. In the health care industry the number of sellers is limited and restricted, while the number of buyers is uncontrolled and could be considered almost infinite. Add to this fact is that the buyers have no freedom of exit from the health industry. (ie. The buyer says, “Well, I disagree with how much you are charging for a heart bypass, so I’ll just skip on down the street to the next guy who is doing them for cheaper.”) And, regardless of how healthy you are, we all know that all of us will be forced to engage in this industry.
The above elements, along with the massive lopsidedness of information, the monopoly power of hospitals, and the atypical nature of health care are all clear violations of the perfect competition requirements for the market to function as the theory suggests.
Furthermore, in a market the price is supposed to be established not by the buyers or sellers, but through a thing called market forces (supply and demand). In the health care industry the market forces fail to institute either price or quantity because demand is price-inelastic. (ie. the seller controls the price absolutely and the buyer has no choice but to engage, unless they want to chance serious illness or death.) However, in America, the person will get treated with or without insurance, but those without insurance will get pushed over to the public sphere and the taxpayer will end up footing the bill. And as Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David U. Himmelstein stated in their research paper, “We are already paying for National Health care, but not getting it.”
So the market has failed to establish price and quantity, and the health care providers have become price-makers and the buyer has little or no choice in the matter - market failure. So why do the majority of DC politicians continue to promote privatization of health care if it is failing? Health care reform through market-based fix-it plans are a joke because of the inherent non-market nature of this industry. And, this is all before the insurance companies even step into the picture.
Next, we add the inherent function of insurance corporations: to maximize shareholder value, and not provide health care, as their number one objective. The insurance corporations exacerbate the problem through exploiting the market failure to maximize profits for shareholders. The New England Journal of Medicine published a research article that explains how 31% of health spending in America is wasted on administrative costs. To compare: The overhead cost of running the non-profit Medicare system is 2%. Another study done by the same authors provides empirical data to prove that the private health industry is increasing costs, and not decreasing costs like the theory suggests it should.
Medicare does need reform, it needs to have tighter regulations so the likes of the governor of Florida Rick Scott can't destroy it with thievery. I would like to know if the millions he paid in fines went to the general fund or to Medicare, I also like to see Medicare pay for Naturalpathic medicine which it does not pay for at this point in time. I am a senior and on Medicare, 80 percent is not covering enough, part D is for prescriptions, most people on fixed incomes cannot afford it, I can barely afford my part B which pays doctor bills, at least 80 percent, better than nothing. We need a Decent single payer health care system. And yes I agree that administration and the huge profits of insurance have driven the cost up. But Medicare could be greatly improved upon.
Don't get me wrong, I do not think Medicare should be privatized, that would destroy the program!
The Player You Get, The Smoker You Drink
"including Medicare. The program needs reforms,"
Yes like being converted into a free single payer system. And the language Salon is using (reforms) has come to mean the destruction of a beneficial program. Maybe Salon needs to think twice about their acceptance of conservative political language.
Nice to see that the majority of CD commenters on this article see through the BS.
The underlying premise of this article is that what is bad for the country is good for the Democratic Party -- and that premise is a fitting emblem for the catastrophe that the two equally self-serving gangs known as "the two major parties" have wrought upon the Republic. Charles Wilson's (understandably) much maligned adage that what is good for General Motors is good for the country seems admirable by comparison. At least he was claiming to want what was good for the country.
.
Joan optimistically presents what she thinks the Democratic party should be, "what it needs to do" and we note sourly on what it has become. But even Joan notes that the notion of compromise with ideological extremisn is not good policy or politics. If we assume Joan is sort of middle of the road then we can hope that what she expresses is finally sinking in the thick and timid skulls of mainstream Democratic Liberals. You know the ones that always seem to turn on a dime, retract their promises and sometimes stab in the back those who were only a short time before their allies. Maybe the Dems are begining to realize that a bit more integrity might actually pay off electorally--maybe.
Paul Ryan, Just another Wisconsin Republican, a Koch brothers puppet, liberals do realize women can vote much unlike the damn republicans and their war against women, health care, blacks, mexicans, the working class, unions, the poor, etc. More tax breaks for the wealthy and more subsidies for the corporations, free market at it's best, capitalism working for America.
The most recent Democrats we have had in office (Clinton and now Obama) have been virtually indistinguishable from Republicans. Given this, it's virtually impossible to generate any enthusiasm for any of the candidates. The only one that has any appeal for me is Ron Paul, but only his foreign policy--which he wouldn't be able to implement anyway.
Virtually indistinguishable? The first thing the Ryan bill will do is get rid of the affordable health care act, every single republican voted against any kind of health care for the citizens of The Untied States. I'm sure every single one that voted against Socialized health care will give up their socialized government paid health care too! Including Paul Ryan.
"The first thing the Ryan bill will do is get rid of the affordable health care act"
Which is probably a good thing, considering the "act" is a sham and an industry give-away. It makes a mockery of what a national heath care bill should be.
If this is true, why did the republicans not want to improve on it instead of wanting to destroy it, I am not much of a Obama person but it appears the republicans are willing to destroy and kill Americans to make Obama look bad. It was mostly that little whining twerp Lieberman from Hartford, the home of health insurance central along with the republicans that destroyed single payer or at least a public option. The affordable health care act should be a start to be improved on, but instead the right is out to destroy it. Can't afford tax cuts for the rich at the same time as health care for the rest.
" why did the republicans not want to improve on it instead of wanting to destroy it"
I can't say for sure because I am not privy to internal GOP communications, but I would suspect they wanted to destroy it simply to undermine Obama. There are a few tidbits within the law that are "positive", such as the inability for insurance companies to deny coverage on the basis of "pre-existing conditions". But overall, I would argue that the legislation is a far cry from what's necessary. One could argue, as you apparently are, that it's a starting point to expand on later. My counter to that is it's a pretty piss-poor starting point when you compare it to universal care in the rest of the industrialized world. In fact, it's laughable to those of us with proper healthcare.
You must be from Canada or someplace other than the US, because here in the States there is no proper health care, just health insurance. If you can afford it.
$738/month for 2 people with a $12,000 deductible. And we've always been pretty healthy. Our insurance company claims they are "non-profit." It's a crazy world.