Paul Ryan may be the best and the brightest Republican in Congress, maybe the best and the brightest in the world, and he’s also got a best/bright web site up for his just re-published “Roadmap for America’s Future (2.0).” I’ve hardly even begun to look it over, but I’ve seen Ryan’s media appearances, including his exchange last Friday with the President, I’ve read his interview at the Daily Caller (despite inexcusable coding problems that make the DC largely inaccessible via Firefox), and, perhaps most helpfully from a political perspective, I’ve read Ezra Klein’s initial reply at his Washington Post blog.
Two things leap out at me: First, the prospect of being mercilessly savaged by defenders of the welfare state will probably prevent Republicans from aligning themselves very closely with Ryan’s proposals, which make Bush 43′s Social Security initiatives look like the nibbling at the margins they were.
Discussing Ryan’s health care ideas, Klein offers a preview of the predictable attacks, in a form that most lib-progs absorb as daily catechism from an early age:
[I]t’s a blunt object of a proposal, swung with incredible force at a vulnerable target. Consider the fury that Republicans turned on Democrats for the insignificant cuts to Medicare that were contained in the health-care reform bill, or the way Bill Clinton gutted Newt Gingrich for proposing far smaller cuts to the program’s spending. This proposal would take Medicare from costing an expected 14.3 percent of GDP in 2080 to less than 4 percent. That’s trillions of dollars that’s not going to health care for seniors. The audacity is breathtaking.
One might ask what makes Ezra Klein think he has the slightest idea what percentage of American GDP near the end of the century we should plan to spend on seniors – does anyone care what the Ezra Kleins of 1940 thought a good percentage for 2010 would be? – but the above is just a mild version of what we could expect if the Republicans fully embraced the Roadmap. The “medi-scare” arsenal would be opened up, and the weaponry wielded with gusto by a Democrat team, bruised and bloodied after the O-care debate, seeking payback for “death panels” and “slashing Medicare,” and, incidentally, fighting to protect their political work of generations.
Second, as long as this discussion is trapped within CBO scoring rules and similar science fiction, it’s going to be fundamentally distorted.Static scoring, in which CBO commits to an effective worst case analysis regarding fiscal impacts (i.e., what would be the fiscal impact if the plan has none of its intended effects), while assuming that everything else will develop “normally,” is almost always going to give the wrong answers on legislative proposals conceived to address the dynamic interactions of budgets and economics. It’s the fiscal version of the stock trader’s back-testing error, the assumption that future performance will be in critical ways commensurate with past performance, when that’s actually the one thing you can be almost certain will not occur. Or maybe an analogy from medicine would be more appropriate: It’s like trying to assess the wisdom of a surgical operation while ignoring the health of the patient before, after, and without.
If we begin with the assumption that the nation’s current fiscal and economic trajectory is sustainable, then there’s no reason to entertain proposals like Ryan’s, yet that assumption is built into CBO scoring as well as the conventional modes of criticism typified by Klein’s response. It’s even built into Ryan’s own approach on a conceptual level, in the implicit notion that we can undertake a revolutionary re-orientation of public policy by earnest detail work.
I’m not ready to discard Ryan’s work – as I’ve confessed, I’ve hardly even looked at it – and I recognize that it may at least serve the purpose of giving the Republicans something to say they’re for, but I’m skeptical that it can represent a politically viable approach. If and when a critical mass of support for ideas like largely privatizing Social Security and Medicare builds, I don’t think it will be expressed in or justified by actuarial calculations out to the year 2080. It’s not Ryan’s fault that the rules of the current game require them, and seem to require that we take them seriously, but, if and when we’re ready – because we have no other choice – to re-do the whole thing, such projections will likely earn the complete disinterest, or laughter, they deserve.
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It is the best time to throw these out for everyone to look at – as the budget numbers have focused people’s attention on government spending in a manner that I cannot ever remember.
Maybe the third rail and its partner in health are actually ready for a realistic appraisal of their – and the rest of the budget’s – financial viability.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I discovered Paul Ryan and his Roadmap quite some time ago, bookmarked it and haven’t been back since. And I quite agree as to Ryan’s intelligence and acumen. I did look it over and reluctantly reached the same conclusion that your initial perusal reached. Politically, much too soon, and much too much.
Today on The Belmont Club the poster, wretchard, made a particularly appropriate response to comment:
“The question before us is, simply: Is this man insane?”
“If President Obama is “insane” then a lot of people are insane like him. He’s not the cause of the problem. He’s the product of a line of thought taken to its ultimate conclusion. A significant percentage of the electorate, and ironically enough, many of those who believe themselves to be the best educated, believe in exactly what he’s doing.
And they’re not going to be dissuaded by anything except the school of hard knocks. Only direct experience of the kind that happens when you stick your finger in an electric socket will convince them of the existence of what they deny. And maybe not even then. Consider you are dealng with people who were perrfectly willing to hand their money over for Global Warming, to that fakir Pachauri and that crew at the Climate Research Unit. Who are convinced Iran is no danger one day and surround it with missiles the next — missiles that are supposed to be useless. Who think nothing of putting a less than salubrious man in charge of safe schools and congratulate themselves for having protected “the children”.
Chesterton was right. When you start believing in these atheist, worker’s paradise ideologies, it doesn’t mean that you believe in nothing. It means you’ll believe in anything. One wonders what it will take to wake people up? The answer is whatever they inflict on themselves. The true believers are performing the equivalent of running their faces up against a granite wall. How long till they admit it hurts?
Some will hold out till the end. There are none so blind as they who will not see. “
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Predictions with specific numbers attached to them are always a tough sell on the optimistic side. When the message is pessimistic, it’s usually not hard to get people repeating your (trumped-up) magic numbers like a mantra, regardless of how meaningless they are from any rational standpoint. But optimism about the positive economic effects of less government can’t really be bolstered that way. (It can be bolstered by appeals to history, of course.)
Reagan had success with discussions of generic policy steps and principle. Frankly, that’s what would resonate with me. I haven’t looked at Ryan’s stuff yet, but if Medicare expenditures slip to 4% of GDP by 2080, that tells me the real message is the sunsetting of the program’s core expectation: that it will take care of “all” medical bills for “all” retired working people. If that lead is being buried under an unpersuasive or easily-attacked pile of projections, it’s a bad approach.
I wouldn’t be dismissive at all about the possibility of people being ready today to hear about rolling back Social Security and Medicare. It’s important not to fear addressing that directly. The most persuasive figures of all are $12 trillion in national debt and another $70-80 trillion in unfunded entitlements. Those are real and credible numbers. We just can’t stay on the path we’re on.
Does anyone here place the slightest credence in a balance sheet or a number trumpeted by anyone in government? I’m too old for that now; too many budget years have gone by in which all intentions, good and bad, have produced the same result: deficit spending.
The biggest budgetary problem by far is entitlement programs. There are only two ways to exert control over entitlement expenditures. One is to reduce the level of the entitlement: less per capita for everyone who shows up with a pulse. The other is to change the entitlement policy itself.
It is possible to do the latter as long as we are free people whose votes matter. It has taken time for the people to see that entitlements are unsustainable over the long run, and it may take more time from here. But I’ve never had as strong a sense that people are waking up, and ready to think in different ways. Republicans need to be ready with a message that resonates with their common sense, more than making specific numerical projections about GDP and government spending.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm
@ Geoffrey Britain:
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Ryan’s refurbished the Roadmap – it’s now version 2.0 and better than ever…
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Right – I’ve re-checked the basic info, which had slipped my mind. This was Ryan’s 2.0 statement from just the other day (27 Jan, offered against the SOTU):
Could have stood some proofreading…
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:23 pm
J.E. Dyer wrote:
Could be – or anyway it’s awful nice to think so – but, if the Republicans, or the New Republicans, or the New Radical Republicans are ever going to implement a radical overhaul and reduction of the federal government, they’ve got to separate themslves from a game that’s fixed so that the house always wins.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’m not sure that I could CK, it has been quite a while. And like J.E. I resonate more to the big picture, I’m not a policy wonk like Ryan reportedly is, so I doubt that I could even point to specific differences between Ryan’s various iterations as it has evolved. I’d need to directly compare them.
I resonate to ‘principle’ more than anything and use that as a barometer of whether something makes sense or not. Invariably if something smells in some fundamental way it will be found to violate some fundamental principle. Ryan’s plan didn’t trip my BS meter but I did judge it to not be politically viable until we reach a crises point.
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:53 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
Mostly I agree JE. Yet Massachusetts demonstrated that people are starting to awaken. That said, I think it will still be awhile, I base that upon Obama’s 83%!!! approval rating after the SOTU address.
If people are going to awaken before we reach absolute crises I think it has to happen by the mid-term elections. If not, wretchard’s point will be inescapable; “One wonders what it will take to wake people up? The answer is whatever they inflict on themselves.” Pain, brutal as it can be is a superb motivator and is the one thing that can break through denial.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
It’s one thing for the people to perceive the need to put on the brakes, or at least let up on the accelerator.
It’s a whole other thing for them to get to the point where they’re willing to give up the goodies the system delivers to them personally, which is what turning around means.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 am
@ Sully:
That’s certainly agreed, Sully, but there are still, even today, a huge number of Americans who are not counting on public assistance for their current welfare. If you’re under 62 and healthy, you’re not on Social Security. If you’re under 65, you’re not on Medicare. If you have health insurance, and most people do, you’re not on Medicaid.
Most people aren’t employed by the government, at any level. If you aren’t on the faculty at a public university, your livelihood isn’t primarily reliant on public funding. It may be partly so, with the reliance being worked out primarily through grants and student loan guarantees. But does this affect your paycheck directly? It doesn’t affect the vast majority of people.
Etc, etc. Certainly, if we add up all the people who rely currently — currently — on public funding, it’s a lot of people. But changing our policies doesn’t have to affect the currently vulnerable people, like the old who can’t just go get a job if their SS deposits stop. The method would be to change the expectations of the younger people who don’t currently rely on public funding, but who vaguely suppose they someday will.
What I sense growing is exactly the groundswell that would be needed make such change possible.
Critics of reforming SS have never actually gotten the younger demographics worked into a fit of terror about the prospect. It’s always the old people they trot out for the emotional appeal; but that’s a cheap con since no reform proposal has ever intended to deny adequate SS to those who have to rely on it. The proposals have in each case been to phase in changes to the basis for SS so that current retirees, and those about to retire, aren’t adversely affected.
There is no groundswell of mindless aversion, among younger people, to reforming the basis of SS for themselves. That doesn’t actually exist as an obstacle to overcome among the majority of the under-50.
I urge GOP politicians (and any Democrats of thoughtful bent) to recognize that there is still a large segment of the population that hasn’t been roped one way or another into government assistance that it now can’t bear to give up. Those people are willing to contemplate change for themselves and their children. I’m betting they are willing to listen to other arguments too, like the valid one that a college education doesn’t have to cost so much, and that it wouldn’t, if the government weren’t so involved in it as sugar-daddy. The “third-party payer” methodology is having the same effect on college prices that it has had for at least 40 years on medical care.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:13 am