In the past, I have tried to give Rep. Paul Ryan credit for at least having the courage to state — honestly and bluntly — what it will take to realize the Republican dream of balancing the budget without raising taxes.
Since I wrote that post, Ryan has become chair of the House Budget Committee and has released a “Roadmap for America’s Future,” based on his budgetary ideas. The roadmap says it will reduce the deficit steadily and eventually produce a balanced budget (although not until 2073), and he proposes to do it all without raising net federal taxes — ever.
After eliminating the deficit, the Ryan plan proposes to keep reducing government until it produces a surplus and ultimately pays off the entire National Debt (in 2080).
I’ve seen Ryan interviewed many times over the past week and he never ceases to mention that his plan will pay off the whole debt (currently $14 trillion, counting the trust funds).
As a long-time deficit/debt hawk myself, I should be thrilled. But I’m not. Because the plan is nonsense.
This link will get you a table from the roadmap (it’s a pdf). It’s a page and a half showing the major spending categories, as a percentage of the GDP, from 2009 through 2083. There are very few major categories, really just the three big entitlement programs, interest on the debt, and one more category labeled “other,” which must cover every single other thing on which the federal government spends any money.
If you’ve been reading about the Ryan plan, your attention has mostly been focused on his plan to reduce the growth of the two big health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid. His health care ideas are controversial. Liberals find them harsh, amounting to privatization, which is a great political scare word. But the Ryan plan for Mediacare and Medicaid adds up to a very significant cut in the amount of health care that future seniors and poor people will get from the government. And I agree. But, being a deficit/debt hawk, I think we have to listen respectfully to any honest ideas for getting the projected long-term growth of those programs under control, and if you don’t agree with Ryan’s ideas (I don’t), put your own ideas on the table to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from devouring our grandchildren’s economy. But this entire fat paragraph is really a colossal distraction from the main point of this post.
The main point is to call your attention to the category to which I alluded above, the one labeled “other.”
What’s ‘other’?
“Other” includes all so-called “discretionary” spending, including the biggest one, the military budget, but also everything from education to ag subsidies to environmental protection to the FBI and the CIA and flood relief and every program (other than Medicaid) that is supposed to help poor people and — well — everything the federal government does other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt.
According to Ryan’s own table, “other” spending in 2010 was 12.4 percent of GDP, more than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt combined.
Now skip to the bottom of the table, the year 2083, when the debt has been paid off and the government is running a surplus. In that happy year, Social Security and Medicare are actually costing a slightly larger share of GDP than they are now, but thanks to Ryan they have neither gone bankrupt nor bankrupted the country. The cost of Medicaid has fallen by half as a percentage of GDP, which is simply heartless and Dickensian.
But the category labeled “other” has fallen to just 3.6 percent of GDP.
It was 12.4 percent in 2010 and, in 2083 it has fallen to 3.6 percent.
The Defense Department alone in 2010 4.7 percent of GDP but in 2083, in Ryanland, it will fit within 3.6 percent and leave enough room for every single other thing the federal government does. (Did I mention before infrastructure and national parks and federal courts and foreign aid and unemployment benefits and, and, and…)
It’s nonsense.
Allow me to confess that I did not stumble upon this fact without help. I was watching “Fareed Zakaria GPS” Sunday and heard the host interview Martin Wolf, the chief economics analyst of the London-based Financial Times. Wolf and the Financial Times are highly regarded in serious business circles. (The transcript is here. The Wolf interview is down near the bottom.)
Wolf said he had studied the Ryan plan closely and he called it “complete fantasyland.” Here’s the full rant (although Wolf delivered it calmly and with a British accent):
WOLF: “If you look at non-health care, non-Social Security and non- interest spending, at the moment, so this is the … Defense Department, Education, the parks, virtually everything, that’s 12 percent of GDP now — 12 percent of GDP. And he’s forecasting, according to the CBO, that 40 years from now, this will be 3.5 percent of GDP.
“So the Defense Department will disappear, the government will disappear — “
ZAKARIA: “And never — never detailing how this will happen.”
WOLF: “The idea that over the next — this would essentially mean reversing 100 years of growth of the federal government. Now, you can only say this is a revolutionary proposal. It would mean the U.S. going back to the sort of country it was in 1900.
“Now, maybe that’s possible. I find it very difficult to believe. I’m not an American citizen. It wouldn’t be possible anywhere else. But surely that’s what really revolutionary. Then Defense Department would disappear.
“To Americans, it amounts to a statement that we would no longer be a first-ranked military power with China rising. I think — it seems to me to be honestly, complete fantasyland.”
Ryan must assume that, under his plan, GDP will grow so much that a smaller percentage of it will be more than sufficient to maintain government programs as we know them now. I’d think that ours and the world’s economies would bump up against ecological and energy constraints long before then. But maybe not in fantasyland.
I couldn’t agree more with both of you. Have you seen what he has projected as the unemployment rate? It is also fantasyland.
You left out the best part. He wants to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent, including those at the top end. Some deficit hawk. Krugman called him The Flim Flam Man a long time ago.
This is road map to the Argentina in the 80s and 90s.
“It would mean the U.S. going back to the sort of country it was in 1900.”
But isn’t that the essence of the GOP vision for our country? Zero-based governing is only one facet of their atavistic fantasy land. In their future dream world, you will also find that:
* everyone is white (except share croppers and household staff);
* We’re decades away from passage of the 19th Amendment, ergo no pesky woman voters;
* We’re a “Christian Nation” (no worries about Sharia laws here!);
* A Republican is President !!!
I can hardly wait.
Oh, but he’s so CUTE! And he says it all with such a STRAIGHT FACE, that you just REALLY, REALLY, want to BELIEVE him!
Plus, what he says, meshes very nicely with the psychological dysfunctions of the Tea Party types and all the Libertarians who truly do believe that, if you just wipe out the US military, all conflict in the world will cease, and “the lion will lie down with the lamb, etc.”
And “might,” will never, ever, “make right” across the face of the globe.
I remember back when my sons, chafing under parental rules and limits back when they were adolescents thought that libertarianism sounded VERY attractive.
Then they grew up and came to realize that what libertarianism really means is that those with the most of anything (power, money, psychological dysfunctionality, etc.) are “empowered” to prey upon and take advantage of those who are not as strong, not as dishonest, nor as dysfunctional).
In other words, my sons GREW UP and realized that rules, regulations, boundaries and well-shared sacrifices make for a much more civilized, much healthier world!
Will Mr. Ryan and the Tea Party crowd ever be able to grow up? Probably not because they would heed skilled counselors to assist them in overcoming their psychological dysfunctions, but those same dysfunctions preclude their ever being able to trust a counselor enough to seek and accept such help.
Since they are unable to see reality, since they are generally very vehement in their denouncements of other, more reality-based and accurate points of view, and since, like Mr. Ryan, they can be quite charming, they must be opposed, exposed for the charlatans they are, and cast aside lest they be allowed to destroy our nation in pursuit of their unrealistic to the point of being completely impossible “fantasy” world.
As history has repeatedly proved, such folks find it far too easy to descend into fascism and police state tactics in order to force the general population to live up to their fanatasies of what human nature “should be” (you know Mickey Bachmann’s re-education camps).
Seeking their utopia, they would force us into “The Handmaid’s Tale,” or “1984,” or even more likely, “Lord of the Flies” on a national scale.
The Republican’s now have no choice but to eliminate government workers.
After what they have been doing to worker’s rights, no union or public employee in his right mind would ever vote for a Republican again.
Maybe by 2083, three generations in the future when slavery is legal again, they will have forgotten.
I don’t understand why Rep. Ryan’s plan is being taken seriously. The kindest assessments I have heard call it “unrealistic” and “unworkable.” yet for some reason, commentators continue to trouble themselves to make patient dissections of the plan, rather than focusing on something worth our attention.
The “at least he made a proposal” line is a very unfunny joke. Stars for effort should not be issued after someone has outgrown the middle school soccer team. Members of Congress don’t need to build their self-esteem.
Anything that purports to forecast the economy seventy years in the future is necessarily ‘fantasy’. Heck, ten years is certainly beyond our ability. Three years is probably the real limit. Having said that, the Ryan plan gives us a map on how to get the healthcare related budget items under control. Compared to the Dem plan, ‘Blame Republicans and Change the Subject’, it’s a breath of fresh air.
The way that Medicare is taken care of is through turning the system into block grants to the states with increases in the block grants tied to CPI, not to medical cost inflation.
In the first ten year period of when this takes place, it is estimated that the individuals share of the costs would rise from 30 percent of the costs to over 80 percent of the costs.
And because for Republicans, you must make the rich more money, the block grants are to be run through private insurers.
It is more than a draconian cut. It is a cynical death sentence for those who do not have millions in retirement funding. It is a guarantee that the elderly will be impoverished at a far faster rate than ever was thought possible.
In regard to “Other Spending”, I seriously question if Erik has ever looked at the Road Map in full. Per the actual document, in the Assumptions section on page 83, “Other Spending” is estimated to grow above inflation as measured by the consumer price index, but is not estimated to grow as a fixed percent of GDP. So basically “other spending” will remain at current levels indexed for CPI or inflation. If you have an issue anywhere it should be with the CBO for providing a GDP growth table that increase greater than the CPI by 8.5% over 60 years. The statement above, “Then Defense Department would disappear”, is laughably stupid to anyone that actually looked at the assumptions.
Not surprisingly the link above doesn’t provide any of the assumptions that are need to objectively evaluate the data.
Eric- while health care “privitization” may be a scare word, it’s also a word that has meaning. It means move from a low-overhead government administration of health plans, to a sector of the industry that has historically and consistently cost more. Since private plans have higher overhead costs, the only way they can try to make up the difference is by denying care. Otherwise, there is nothing left to pay CEOs/CFOs/VPs/Boards, most of whom make substantially more than any government employee would.
This portion of the proposal is a political bet. If enough people have bought into “private is always better”, it wins. If enough can look at data and recognize that medicare has ALWAYS outperformed the private sector, it loses. Thankfully, the data is out there for all to see; unfortuantely, people don’t seem to care about facts anymore.
His “Path ot Prosperity” is really just a re-paved version of the trickle-down “Road to Ruin.” It’s all a bunch of recycled economic snake oil repackaged as some mircacle cure. What makes him think that becasue it has been tried and failed before, that somehow this time it will work? All the evidence we have says it won’t work.
For all the bellyaching the Republicans do about government you would think there would be someone who actually knew something about a viable economic plan. Apparently not.
I do not recall Mr. Black giving equal treatment to the Obama budget plan.
Just because Mr. Black calls himself “a long-time deficit/debt hawk” does not make it so.
Criticism of the Ryan proposal and silence with the Obama proposal is just politics as usual.
Maybe the “fantasy” in Mr. Black’s characterization of himself.
But the Commentariat class (which, in D.C. means earning six – or even seven – figures) loves Paul Ryan because he’s just so, so darn…SERIOUS. He writes up long, borring reports with numbers and charts, so it’s got to be true, full of morally bracing personal sacrifice (unless you’re a 6 or 7 figure earner…), and just so, yep, serious!!
Seriously deluded. Seriously a road map to a sliver of ultra-elites ruling over a mass of serfs not unlike medieval Europe. But that’s a serious policy choice now days – rich richer, everyone else poor, dislocated, ready to throttle thy neighbor, and excluded from the walled enclaves of Koch-ville.
Orwell, eat your heart out!
Hard to argue with any of the first 8 comments. I just want to add a bit to Martin Wolf’s line: “It would mean the U.S. going back to the sort of country it was in 1900.”
I’m in agreement with Cecil (#5).
Everything I’ve read and heard, both from Republicans and from their critics, says that basically the Republican (i.e., “conservative”) agenda is to “repeal the 20th century.” Not only is this absolutely NOT “conservative” in any meaningful way, it’s the platform of a right-wing revolution that essentially makes democracy – once again – the province of white, male, Protestant landowners. It’s not a return to 1900. It’s a return to 1800, before industrialization had really begun to take hold in the United States, or in most of the world outside small areas of northern Europe. Renters, immigrants, women, urban dwellers in general, people whose manual labor isn’t agricultural, don’t fit that picture. It’s Thomas Jefferson’s “Agrarian Myth” writ large, with some carefully considered additions, and with fancy new 21st-century technological bits to make it more appealing to select members of the iPod generation.
I’d also add that, in line with the above, nothing I’ve seen from the Republican side hints at any meaningful reduction in defense spending, even though we spend as much on “defense” as every other major power combined, with no enemies in sight except domestic and foreign terrorists. Despite the fact that those are enemies against which an aircraft carrier is pointless, Mr. Wolf’s assumption that the Department of Defense will disappear seems to me unfounded. It’s far more likely, given the rhetoric we’ve all heard from Mrs. Bachmann, Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Pawlenty and others, that the DOD will remain intact, and instead, it’s all those “other” areas – from national parks to unemployment benefits to federal courts to government-funded medical research – that would be eliminated over the ensuing decades.
I give Mr. Ryan 10 points for at least putting on the table the entitlement programs that will have to be modified to get us back to fiscal health. He needs 60 points to pass my class, and at least 80 points for a “B”. Given that his proposal to repeal the 20th century punishes everyone except the very wealthy, 10 points is all he gets at this point, so he has a long way to go. Andrew Carnegie – no liberal, he – would likely have labeled Ryan’s proposal as irresponsible.
Putting aside the fantasyland numbers that Ryan uses, my biggest objection is the continued characterization of Ryan as brave or courageous for coming up with this plan. Where is the courage in giving huge tax cuts to the rich, while cutting programs that serve the most vulnerable? Ryan is a wealthy guy from a very wealthy family who wants to help the wealthy at the expense of the poor. How is that brave?
@Gotzman,
Rather than searching for a grain of reason in the Ryan budget plan, you waste your energy slandering a media member as a lefty. Now THAT sounds like politics as usual. If you see anything that’s remotely sensible in the Ryan plan, please come back and let us know.
//”It would mean the U.S. going back to the sort of country it was in 1900.”
Yes, the easiest way to get your head around the Republican agenda is to remember that they want to erase the 20th century.
RE: #11
Joseph writes “If you have an issue anywhere it should be with the CBO for providing a GDP growth table that increase greater than the CPI by 8.5% over 60 years.”
But what I read in the CBO document is that: “GDP would grow by an average of 4.2 percent per year in nominal dollars over the period from 2022 to 2050, with inflation-adjusted GDP growing at 2.0 percent”.
It goes on to say that:
“In keeping with long-standing practice for estimating the effects of budget proposals, CBO did not incorporate in its estimates any impact of the proposal on GDP.”
And also:
“Therefore, in the long term, GDP and national income would be higher under the proposal than under the alternative fiscal scenario”.
But no where do I see an GDP estimate by the for Ryan’s proposal. So, as far as I can tell, the only inflation adjusted CBO estimate is 2%.
Any other GDP growth estimate is an assumption from Rep. Ryan, not the CBO.
Is it possible that Ryan is courageous AND you also disagree with his approach? What makes it courageous is that it deals with problems that will happen after he is long gone from public office. He is touching the “third rail” of politics even though it will not help him or his party at the ballot box in the near term.
Now if his numbers are bad, or his proposal is too draconian in cuts, that makes it a bad plan. That does NOT make him any less courageous.
Bill Moyers published an essay five or more years ago in which he bemoaned the marriage of religion (by which he means right-wing Christian fundamentalism) and public policy.
His bemoan might now have to be widened to include the godawful right-wing ignorance of how the economy really works (Keynesianism and progressive taxation) and what the Constitution really says (provide for the common welfare, by which is meant the common good, including direct payments to those who cannot help themselves as well as infrastructure, education, etc.).
Every Democratic president since Nixon’s second term has used these methods to grow the economy faster than the deficit. Ergo, there came jobs and general prosperity as the deficit shrank until it disappeared.
The Koch brothers and other wealthy financiers of right-wing propaganda have — for the moment — made lots of American voters erroneously believe that policies like Rand’s (or Governor Walker’s) will really be good for them. I think I see some daylight, though, since the massive demonstrations in Madison.
Just curious, why do 2-3 commentators think the GOP is anti women’s suffrage?
Mr. Black, you might be interested in this piece from Foreign Policy magazine, “Keep it shut!”
RE: #20
What CBO document are you using to find your quotes?
Regardless, I believe all the GDP information is derived from the 2009 CBO document “The Long-Term Budget Outlook”. This is why the CBO in its letter to Rep Ryan was able to compare the Road Map to the Alternative Fiscal Scenario (derived from the LTBO) as a percentage of GDP without disclosure. If the GDP numbers were different the comparison meaningless and the discrepancy would be at least footnoted. Letter to Rep Ryan page 6.
Dan#23,
Republicans don’t mind women voting, as long as they vote the way their husbands tell to vote.
#12 Medicare will continue to outperform the private sector as long as it can continue to pay less than actual cost for healthcare while the private sector is forced to make up the difference.
To all: The real answer comes Wednesday!
Well, it is a lot better than the dems “spend, spend and spend us into demise” plan
Remember, the GOP is focused on eliminating social security and medicare so they can continue the Bush tax cuts. As a result many more of the elderly, and I mean tens of millions of seniors, will live in abject poverty as they no longer have pensions, make livable wages and can afford to save for retirement durring their prime earning years. How in the heck do those Tea Partiers think they will fund their retirement? Are they putting away twenty gradnd a year? Will that private insurance be less than twenty grand a year for the high risk elderly? Those problems have already been solved through social security and medicare. It was working perfectly. The problem is that you need a more progressive tax system to fund it and can’t keep privatizing medicare in bits and pieces. The only thing Ryan will accomplish is making the country bullet proof for billionaires. Disgusting.
unfair but cute. someone should do a stand up with this ryan guy as the very un attractive creature from the black lagoon. then what we think of his ideas ? But I’ll stick with outright unfair. if i wasn’t heard so unfair.
But wait! Isn’t it the case that Ryans “cuts” are offset by decreasing tax rates for wealthy Americans? And by providing elder Americans a voucher for health insurance, do we not run the risk of creating so
called death panels by providing very limited coverage?
#30 “Those problems have already been solved through social security and medicare. It was working perfectly.”
And therein lies the delusion that makes the Ryan plan or one like it necessary. Even honest democrats, should any still exist, will admit that the current system is unsustainable. It is a Ponzi scheme that benefits those already in it but is a cruel hoax to anyone who is twenty or more years away from collecting their reward.
People like me won’t be affected regardless of what the politicians decide. I’m simply dumbfounded that it seems to be the young and the middleclass government employees, like those who comment here, who are most opposed to finding a real solution.
Almost identical articles from Bloomberg News and Politico, based on Capitol Hill sources, describe how it was Obama — not Sen. Harry Reid — who negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner and signed off on most of the cuts, what Rep. Paul Ryan described as “80% of what we [the GOP right wing] wanted.” The White House at one point simply told Boehner and Reid that “Democrats” would accept $33 billion in cuts, not $10 billion which was what Reid had accepted. Boehner then demanded $40 billion; the White House then agreed to $38-plus billion; etc.
Obama political advisor David Plouffe was deployed to almost all the Sunday morning talk shows to announce that Obama would put out a multi-year budget plan this week, and “would look for savings in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, and would explore ways to strengthen the Social Security program. You’re going to have to look at Medicare and Medicaid and see what kind of savings you can get…. ”
Obama is as evil as Ryan and Boehner.
At least one individual has the courage to be first to put a plan on the table. President Obama is said to be ready to present his, a group of progressive democrats are preparing a tax and spend plan, and who knows who else might put his 2 cents in. Good chance the 2012 budget will be a mish-mash of all of the above.
//Obama is as evil as Ryan and Boehner.
I agree. The problem here is really the Democrats. The Republican are simply doing wha they do, but the Democrats are supposed to be providing an alternative, instead they just play defense and pretend surrender is compromise. It’s a joke no one is laughing at.
The voices of REAL Democrats (the progressives) are seldom heard, but they are saying what Americans need to hear and writing legislation that would make America a healthy society with a strong safety net once again.
Watching committee meetings on C-Span does give progressive Dems exposure, but only to those of us who enjoy watching the proceedings. Dennis Kucinich is a particular joy. He words questions in ways that force questionees to admit awkward truths again and again.
The mainstream media have proven more than once that they favor certain candidates when monitoring and broadcasting candidate debates. Mr.Kucinich was ignored for 29 minutes into an ABC presidential candidate debate in 2008, for instance, while Obama, Clinton and Edwards seemed to be given longer times for their answers.
In 2006, the network I watched used zoomed-in views of George Bush’s face and went W A A A Y back to make John Kerry look like a puny little man behind a puny little podium.
To approach any kind of fairness, the major parties MUST return the moderating role to the League of Women Voters. We could even see more acceptable candidates like Kucinich be declared Winners!
The Republican plan is a joke that no one is laughing at. Maybe the Republican just don’t intend any of these to be factual statements. Check out Colbert’s take on the Planned Parenthood cuts:
http://ca.gawker.com/5791100/watch-stephen-colberts-defense-of-planned-parenthood