Seriously

This is my once-a-year (or so) foray into politics. Just skip it if you are fatigued about that whole mess. Trust me, I completely understand. These posts afford me a sort of cleansing (exorcism) of political thoughts (demons) from my system. In that respect, they are sort of like an enema.

After completing a 2.5 mile run on the trail where the James River crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway, I plopped down at this sweet picnic area right on the river banks. I was armed with a couple of fresh peaches bought from a roadside stand outside of Buena Vista, VA, a couple of bottles of water, and a printout of the PDF of the Paul Ryan Plan – check that,  I mean The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise Plan.

I realize that I just painted a weird (and in some respects, absurd) picture. I basically had the entire park to myself surrounded by all this natural beauty, sitting at this picnic table, scarfing down some delicious fresh fruit, and rehydrating with some H20. What in the world was I doing with a printout of the Ryan Plan?

Well, while the Burn’s documentary (described in my last post) laid out a pretty strong case for the inherent value to our country of the National Park Service (it is America’s Best Idea after all) , we are sitting at a $3.55 trillion dollar federal budget. For context, the budget line item for the National Parks Service was $2.75B in 2010. No small chunk of cabbage there and every little bit of savings will help. What better setting in which to do some thinking about this Ryan proposal and big themes like our priorities as a country and whether we can even afford luxuries like National Parks anymore? Plus I needed some light reading for the trip.

The thing that all the conservative talking heads seem to agree on is that this is a serious proposal. I wish I had a dime for every time that adjective has been uttered in regards to the Ryan Plan. So as a public service, here is a link to the serious document (all 61 pages plus two appendices). Did I mention that this is a serious proposal? Contrast that with the President’s Plan which is, you got it, not serious. Apparently, one doesn’t need to evaluate whether a plan is practical or achievable or realistic or even truthful. One must rather gauge the seriousness of the plan.

Don’t you just love the way that every piece of legislation nowadays gets a cool label attached to it that has been target-market tested? I suppose this technique must work since it is universally applied. Since we are basically a nation of lowest common denominator idiots susceptible to advertising, I am sure that this technique works. Just one more aspect of using language and messaging as a weapon to obfuscate when your position or proposal can’t stand on its own intellectual merits. Consider that:

• If you are against the Patriot Act, then, by God, you must be unpatriotic.
• If you are against No Child Left Behind, then, by God, you must be for, well, leaving children behind. 
• Finally, if you are against The Path To Prosperity, then, by God, you must be for the path to whatever the antonym of prosperity is (Liberalism, Moral Decay, Moral Relativism, Terrorism, Communism, Nanny State, Marxism - hell you get the picture, they are all the same thing).

I don’t have a degree in Economics or Finance. I did take one semester of Micro-Economics and one semester of Macro-Economics at Pitt. I don’t remember much about the Micro-Economics course. The Macro course was memorable because of the (at the time) quite attractive young German professor who taught it. (BTW - It doesn’t look like Dr. Paus has changed her hair style in the last 30 years.)

So I don’t possess any special background or knowledge about the subject of this post. One could say that, given my credentials, I fit in with the large percentage of the rest of the talking heads. I mean, really, when has not having any background or expertise on a subject kept people from bloviating on it. There would be a lot of dead air on AM Radio and damn near all of cable news if that was the case.

Having said all that, I contend that the Ryan Plan is not serious (OMG!). I say that not because I have some Crystal Economic Ball or because I believe that block granting Medicaid to the states won’t save $95B or that reducing corporate tax rates from %35 to %25 won’t be a good thing.

I say it it is not serious simply because the plan:

• Passes on addressing two of the three largest components of the budget – Social Security and Defense Spending.
• Completely ignores the revenue side of the budget by treating tax increases as inviolate.
• Doesn’t spread the pain and sacrifice required for recovery across all classes of Americans. The Middle Class will bear the brunt while the Wealthiest Americans won’t even get a scratch. If you want to label that as Class Warfare, then so be it.

Here is my logic – it is nothing original or deep and you can probably identify gaping holes in the premises – but it is what I am going with.

1. The system is fundamentally broken. Both parties are beholden to their own collection of special interests with their associated army of sub-human lobbyists in their $2000 suits and their well-appointed K Street offices. These scumbags thrive in this sewer of corruption and have somehow sold us on this line of bullshit that any campaign finance restrictions violate free speech.
2. Neither collection of these special interests is inherently more noble or moral than the other.
3. These collections of special interests are most certainly not aligned with the best interests of the country as a whole.
4. When you pick one of these teams to cheer for, you are basically throwing your support and money behind these collections of special interests that have bought the influence of your leaders.
5. Any plan to address this mess (created by both parties BTW) that has near unanimous support from either the Conservative cheerleaders or Liberal cheerleaders will by definition not be good for the country as a whole since it will be skewed to one collection of special interests.
6. The Ryan Plan has cult-like adoption and support by Conservatives. The “group think” here is Orwellian.
7. Therefore, the Ryan Plan, while aligned smartly with the special interests that Conservatives treasure, is not aligned with the best interests of the country as a whole.
8. QED. LOL. Like I said, I am not a budget expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

The figure to the left is courtesy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and is described in more detail at Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?. Excellent and informative site BTW.

So to net it out, here is my reading on the budget:

• Conservatives are not going to budge on Defense Spending (The Ryan Plan is the Republican Plan.) Conservatives need to get re-elected after all.
• Conservatives also take taxes off the table (top marginal rates are low historically but even reverting back to Clinton Level rates is dismissed out of hand). So we are only going to balance the budget via cuts and the magic of Supply Side Economics to raise revenue levels. Conservatives need to get re-elected after all.
• Liberals will not permit any contraction to Medicaid and any of the other Safety Net entitlement stuff. Liberals need to get re-elected after all.
• Irony. The Ryan Plan includes the same $500B (and then some) cuts in Medicare that Conservatives raked President Obama over the coals for only last year (and that Democrats supported then). Now both parties have switched positions. I guess their thinking has evolved. One party’s Death Panels are another party’s Death Traps.
• Neither group seems to want to touch Social Security. Geez Louise, not even means testing? They all need to get re-elected after all.

Does anybody think that the other side is just going to sacrifice and roll over on any of this? Of course not! They could not get re-elected. So with all of these immovable and intractable positions being set into concrete on four-fifths of the budget, that basically leaves us all screwed, doesn’t it?

Oh wait! Both of these loser movements can still wage their stupid Culture War in that last Remaining Fifth of  the budget where the really important stuff is. (That is sarcasm.) We have already seen that in action in all of its sad glory. Republicans rout the Democrats last November and somehow interpret it as a mandate for Social Conservatism.

Yep, go ahead and draw your damn line in the sand over funding for the really important line items in the budget like those for EPA, NPR, and Planned Parenthood. While you’re at it, why don’t you dust off constitutional amendments banning Gay Marriage, Flag Burning, and Sharia Law? Nothing like throwing that red meat to each of their retarded bases and, in the process, scaring away any moderates. Only True Believers need apply. RINOs and DINOs are so 20th Century.

That kind of posturing is so courageous and serious, isn’t it?

The other thing that I have come to conclude is that both parties suck at projecting the true costs/benefits of these budget items and completely oversell the positive aspects. Much of it is guess work, optimistic number fudging, and, in many cases, straight-out lies. So take it with a grain of salt, for example, the next time a career politician pulls some number out of his ass and says that the cost of destroying a country, building it back up, and instituting a democracy in said country should not exceed $100B.

This serious Ryan Plan trumpets a study made by the conservative Heritage Foundation (a truly serious think tank) that projects that the economic growth that is generated by the plan will be so compelling that the unemployment rate will drop to %2.8 by 2021. That is not a misprint. %2.8? In nine years? Really? We haven’t seen %3 unemployment since 1944 (the height of WWII).

But where does all of this leave the National Park Service? To each his own. Personally speaking, I am cool with spending one-thirteenth of one percent of the $3.55 trillion federal budget on the National Park System and the agency that runs it. But your mileage may vary and if you don’t agree, then it doesn’t make you evil or a bad person or a fascist or even a liberal. I am also OK with that NPS budget getting slashed as well. After all, it should be about shared sacrifice and not sacred cows that are untouchable.

I just hope that, when we are finished abolishing the Departments of Education, Energy, Interior as well as NASA and anything remotely related to science (especially climate studies), that there are honest attempts made to actually address cuts in the other %80 of the budget.

Postscript: Most of this post was constructed a couple of weeks ago when the Ryan Plan really did enjoy universal support from Conservatives, so it is a little outdated. Since that time:

1. The High Priest and Big Idea Thinker of the Conservative Religion (and Tiffany’s customer of the month) has tanked his own Presidential aspirations by referring to the Medicare Reform portions of the plan as “Right Wing Social Engineering”. Ouch!
2. Many conservative politicians have apparently tapped into some opinion polls around public support for Medicare that are scaring the shit out of them. Of course we know that conservatives, unlike liberals, are principled and never govern by public opinion polls so I am not sure how to interpret that.
3. The special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District was held.

Glad I got that out of my system!