DownWithTyranny!: GOP First Responder Paul Ryan Wants To Take You For A Little Ride

The teabaggers who helped propel Republican corporate shills and Wall Street tools like John Boehner (R-OH) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) into national power-- ironically the two Members of Congress most complicit in the passage of TARP-- are starting to get serious in ways Boehner, Ryan and their cronies aren't comfortable with. They liked the noisy, colorful-- if sometimes outlandish-- cheerleading, the donations and the votes but... what's all this about real spending cuts! With political hacks like Boehner and Ryan as well as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Appropriations Chairman Hal "Prince of Pork" Rogers, getting ready to redivide the patronage pie to favor themselves and their allies, the teabaggers are getting angry-- as are traditionally complacent newly elected backbenchers-- in many cases, teabaggers themselves.

Rank and file Republicans aren't happy with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). They think the GOP should take a hatchet to the federal budget now, to make good on their pledge to slash spending by $100 billion "this year." And their displeasure is spilling out into the open.

"Despite the added challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep our $100 billion pledge to the American people," reads a draft of a letter to Boehner, obtained by TPM, being circulated by the Republican Study Committee. "These $100 billion in cuts to non-security discretionary spending not only ensure that we keep our word to the American people; they represent a credible down payment on the fiscally responsible measures that will be needed to get the nation's finances back on track."

What they're demanding is that Boehner and Ryan-- remember, the two who forced through TARP-- ditch the "let's all behave like adults" rhetoric and hold the nation's financial system hostage when the debt ceiling vote comes up. Boehner and Ryan-- like Cantor and almost all the GOP leaders-- answer primarily to Wall Street and the banksters. And they don't envision an economic collapse so some angry white old sociopaths with triangle hats can bask in the glory of their own stupidity.

Ultimately, these decisions about the budget and potential spending cuts will be made at higher levels than Jordan and the RSC-- by leadership, by Ryan, and by Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers. But the rank and file are doing their best to make sure they don't get rolled.

At a Rules Committee hearing Wednesday, Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) sought, and achieved, a symbolic change to a GOP resolution pledging to bring down spending. The subtitle originally described it as a resolution "[t]o reduce spending through a transition to non-security spending at fiscal year 2008 levels."

Scott's amendment changed that language: "Reducing non-security spending" to 2008 levels. It doesn't accomplish any actual spending goals. But it's a signal to leadership that they're going to eliminate any amount of wiggle room where they see it.

Ryan has sucked up $2,127,615 in legalistic bribes from the finance/insurance/real estate sector in his short career, more than any other Wisconsin politician in history, including Members who were in Congress when Ryan was still playing hopscotch in the school yard. He's getting nervous about serving two masters who are at each other's throats. And if that wasn't enough, the new Budget Committee Chair just got majorly spanked by the non-partisan Economic Policy institute in an analysis of what has been widely called Paul Ryan’s Road Map to Ruin.

The call it a plan for "millionaires' gain and middle-class pain." The subtitle lays out the basis of Ryan's-- and the GOP's-- entire economic program: The ‘Ryan Roadmap’ leads to an entitlement raid and middle-class tax hikes in order to enrich the wealthy,

"Paul Ryan’s ‘Road Map’ serves up the destruction of the middle-class in order to line the pockets of his Wall Street benefactors,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said yesterday. “Ryan’s radical proposal includes draconian spending cuts that eliminate social safety nets like Medicare and Social Security, yet fails to provide for, or even mention, the resources and education needed for the next generation of Wisconsin’s children to thrive. It begs the question-- who does Paul Ryan really go to work for?”

Yesterday the radicals in the GOP caucus to the right of Boehner and Ryan demanded the kinds of spending cuts that will entirely derail any inklings of an economic recovery and will further insure that Ryan's roadmap heads right for the nearest ditch, one they hope Obama will be blamed for. Remember the Republican congressman-- Gohmert or King or some other imbecile like that-- who declared no one goes to museums but snobs and elites? Culture is just one of many enemies of the GOP they plan to starve to death.

To no one's surprise, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have been targeted for zero funding by a group of conservative Republicans.

The Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), unveiled a plan Thursday to cut the federal cultural endowments down to nothing. The Spending Reduction Plan, which sponsors want to introduce formally on Monday, pledges to save the country $2.5 trillion. It would eliminate $167.5 million for both the NEA and NEH. The agencies had slowly regained some budgetary ground in recent years after taking a pounding during the cultural wars of the 1990s. The bill would also take away $20 million from the Woodrow Wilson Center.

But culture isn't the only target-- not by a longshot. The very fabric of America is where they want to start the negotiations... because in their minds there's a legitimate America (people who look and think like they do, Palin's "real America," and then there's everyone else... you know, all those people who elected Barack Obama, many of whom live in... cities. There are 165 House Republicans in the Republican Study Group, most of them-- in fact, almost all of them-- insane and totally out of touch with the 21st century.

A band of conservative House Republicans said Thursday that Congress should slash more than $2.5 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade, primarily by cutting non-defense appropriations back to 2006 levels and firing 15 percent of the federal workforce.

Unveiling its spending proposal, the Republican Study Committee also urged House leaders to make good on their campaign promises to immediately slash agency budgets back to 2008 levels. The RSC also wants Congress to cut $80 billion from an upcoming temporary resolution that would keep the government running through September. The government is currently functioning under a temporary resolution that expires in March.

They revel in making themselves look like kooks and making wingers like Boehner, Cantor and Ryan seem almost reasonable and plausible in comparison-- the kind of Republicans a conservative like Obama can do business with. They "offered a list of programs and subsidies they hope to eliminate, including payments to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the International Fund for Ireland, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Amtrak, the Hope VI public housing program, Title X Family Planning programs and USAID foreign aid programs. The group wants to eliminate federal subsidies to the Legal Services Corp., which provides legal assistance to the poor, and cut off more than $360 million in annual aid to the District government and the Washington Metro system," as well as to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here are some of their specific proposals:

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidy: $445 million a year.

• National Endowment for the Arts: $167.5 million a year.

• Amtrak Subsidies: $1.565 billion a year.

• Community Development Block Grants Fund: $4.5 billion a year.

• New Starts Transit: $2 billion a year.

• Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants: $2.5 billion a year.

• Title X Family Planning: $318 million a year.

• Applied Research at Department of Energy: $1.27 billion a year.

• U.S. Agency for International Development: $1.39 billion a year.

Imagine how quasi-mainstream it makes the Obama Catfood Commission's dreadful proposals look! The Economic Policy Institute analysis of Ryan's plan shows me that there's nothing to the left of Obama's conservatism. There's the reactionary law of the jungle insanity from the teabaggers and the more Wall Street-oriented conservatism that Ryan and Boehner represent. But a loud silence-- thanks Rahm Emanuel-- where there should be lively progressive voices.

Recent deficit reduction proposals, including those from President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the Fiscal Commission) and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Deficit Reduction Task Force, have contained a mixture of revenue increases and spending cuts to achieve long-term fiscal stability. The Ryan Roadmap, on the other hand, makes no pretense of a balanced approach. It would slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits and deplete tax revenue. It trades middle-class pain for millionaires’ gains.

The Roadmap is riddled with policies that ignore the lessons learned from the Great Depression and underscored by the Great Recession. Policy and market failures set the stage for a meltdown of the global financial system and the worst recession since the Great Depression, but Ryan’s plan still swears by the failed Bush-era economic policies of cutting taxes for the wealthy while neglecting the middle class and national investments. It even proposes the partial privatization of Social Security, an increase in taxes on the middle class, the elimination of corporate taxes, and the privatization of Medicare.

Among other changes, the Ryan Roadmap proposes:

• Raising taxes only on those Americans making between $20,000 and $200,000, while slashing taxes in half for the wealthiest Americans. The middle class would pay higher average tax rates than millionaires-- an unprecedented reversal of progressive U.S. tax policy.

• Eliminating taxation of corporate income and replacing it with a consumption tax that would disproportionately hit middle-class Americans.

• Placing the entire burden of deficit reduction on spending cuts. The Ryan Roadmap prioritizes dismantling social insurance programs, not balancing the budget.

• Replacing Medicare and Medicaid with inadequate vouchers to purchase health insurance in a broken marketplace.

• Privatizing Social Security for wealthy Americans and ending Social Security’s role as universal social insurance with benefits tied to lifetime earnings.

How does Ryan get away with this-- in a district, no less, that voted for Obama in 2008? Well, start with the fact that someone is protecting him. The DCCC has never-- not once-- fielded a serious challenge, nor has the Wisconsin Democratic Party. That's right, Paul Ryan, in a swing district leaning blue, has never once had to defend his seat from a plausible opponent. A lump of coal could have done as well against Ryan as the opponents the Democrats have run against him. And then there's the media. Are they bought out-- or just incredible stupid. Here's a piece of an interview Ryan's (and Feingold's) hometown paper, the Janesville Gazette, ran this week, which Ryan proudly sent out to his constituents.

Q: The Congressional Budget Office says that repealing health care reform would actually increase the deficit by $240 billion.

A: Lawmakers have manipulated the assumptions and used accounting tricks to get the response from the nonpartisan CBO that they want, Ryan said. When those things are removed, the law adds to the federal deficit by about $700 billion, he said, "and that's using CBO numbers as well."

Q: Could it also be that the assumptions you provide to the CBO lead to inaccurate conclusions?

A: "That's why I requested from the CBO, in a letter, whether or not this money is being double-counted, whether or not certain monies were not being counted, and they confirmed that that was the fact. And that if you used these sorts of budget gimmicks that it would result in about a $700 billion deficit."

Ryan went on to say that he doesn't agree with a CBO assumption about how many employers will stop providing health insurance, sending their employees into the government exchange, set up for the non-insured.

"I've talked to so many different employers who have told me to my face that once this law gets kicked in, they're going to dump their employees into the exchange (because employers will have to provide health insurance at a higher cost or pay a $2,000 per-employee fine.)

"And what employers are telling me is that their employers are already deciding to do this. ... When one employer in a sector starts dumping their employees for cost savings ... other competitors will do the same so they don't lose a competitive advantage."

(Note: Critics say employers have the choice of passing added health costs to their workers.)

"A lot of private-sector actuaries are telling us that as much as two-thirds of America's employers will dump their employees into the government-run exchange when this law is fully implemented, and that scares me. And if that actually materializes, the costs will explode within this law."

Q: Why explode?

A: "Because the government will be on the hook for tens of millions of more people's health care than what is currently estimated. ... This is the largest open-ended entitlement that's ever been created, and it will explode in costs, I believe, because all open-ended entitlements that have ever been created have come in far, far above their original cost estimates, and I don't see how this is going to be any different."

(Note: Ryan also subscribes to the Republican charge that the law would destroy jobs. Some independent analyses, however, say it would create jobs.)

Q: Is there another way to alter health-care reform because repeal is highly unlikely?

A: Ryan noted a federal judge already has ruled that the mandate that all Americans obtain health insurance is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is likely to take up the question. Ryan said the high court could strike down the entire law. At that point, "I do believe we can have universal access to affordable health care, even for everybody with pre-existing conditions without having the government take it over. ...

"There's a better way to do this. Many of us have proposed those alternatives. We approached the president over a year ago to work with us to put these alternatives in place. Unfortunately, he chose not to go that way and do a one-party rule."

Ryan said he will propose a market-driven approach in which providers compete, thus reducing costs.

Q: Many on the other side will provide equally convincing arguments. How do we know whom to believe?

A: "I look at the evidence of government-run systems, and they mean more price controls, less consumer choice, lower quality. That's the inevitable outcome."

Ryan pointed to the costs of Lasik eye surgery, which is elective and therefore subject to market forces. The prices have dropped by more than 100 percent in 10 years while quality has increased, he said.

"We basically have health care monopolies that are price-increasing and reducing choices, and consumers ... really can't shop around based on price and quality because you don't have that information. You're often told who and where you have to go to because you're forced in an HMO. And so I think the status-quo system, this third-party system, is one of the root causes of high health care costs. ... And the answer is not to have the government take it over. ... The answer is make people-- patients, the consumer-- more powerful in the marketplace so we can use the power of choice, of competition, of accountability, of transparency, to solve this problem in health care like it has solved so many other problems in other aspects of our economy."

Technically he's speaking English. But only technically. His gibberish is meant to confuse, not to illuminate. And it works. Paul Ryan is still in Congress. Russ Feingold isn't. In 2012, let's make sure Paul Ryan has a serious challenge he has to deal with. We won't be able to count on the DCCC, of course, but if we show the Wisconsin Democratic Party we're serious, they will be too.

UPDATE: The Flimflam Man Revisited: GOP Finds A Charlatan To Respond To The State Of The Union

This morning Boehner announced that Wall Street's favorite Washington shill would give the Republican response to the State of the Union by President Obama, another Wall Street fave. Who will ever speak for ordinary working families? This is what the GOP had to say about Ryan as their first responder:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced today that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will deliver the Republican address following the President’s State of the Union address to Congress on January 25, 2011. Last year – in an unprecedented failure – Congressional Democrats chose not to pass, or even propose a budget, punting on a duty that represents the most basic responsibility of governing. Chairman Ryan will deliver the Republican address Tuesday night from the House Budget Committee hearing room, where the Democrats’ spending spree will end and the Republicans’ push for a fiscally responsible budget that cuts spending will begin.

In making the announcement, the GOP leaders noted that Chairman Ryan is a leading voice for fiscal discipline and common-sense solutions to cut spending and create jobs. Known for his thoughtful and detailed critiques of big-government policies, Ryan has helped put to rest the Democrats’ argument that more government spending and higher taxes is the answer to most of our nation’s ills. His commitment to free enterprise and limited government make him the right choice to outline a vision for how a smaller, less costly government will help create the right conditions for the creation of good, private sector jobs.

“Paul Ryan is uniquely qualified to address the state of our economy and the fiscal challenges that face our country,” said Speaker Boehner. “We’re broke, and decisive action is needed to help our economy get back to creating jobs and end the spending binge in Washington that threatens our children’s future. I’m pleased that Paul will be outlining a common-sense vision for moving our country forward.”

Leader McConnell said, “Paul Ryan has spent the better part of the last two years explaining exactly why the Democrat agenda has been so bad for jobs and the economy, and why we need to ditch the government-driven approach in favor of creative, common-sense solutions that put the American people back in charge. Chairman Ryan’s unique understanding of the fiscal problems we face, his command of policy, and his adherence to the principles of our nation’s founding make him an excellent spokesman for the path that Americans want Washington to take.”

What a pile of crap! And just what makes ordinary Americans distrustful of Washington! Last August Paul Krugman did a brilliant column in the NY Times explaining just what Paul Ryan is: The Flimflan Man.

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, the Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.

Mr. Ryan’s plan calls for steep cuts in both spending and taxes. He’d have you believe that the combined effect would be much lower budget deficits, and, according to that Washington Post report, he speaks about deficits “in apocalyptic terms.” And The Post also tells us that his plan would, indeed, sharply reduce the flow of red ink: “The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan would cut the budget deficit in half by 2020.”

But the budget office has done no such thing. At Mr. Ryan’s request, it produced an estimate of the budget effects of his proposed spending cuts-- period. It didn’t address the revenue losses from his tax cuts.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion.

And that’s about the same as the budget office’s estimate of the 2020 deficit under the Obama administration’s plans. That is, Mr. Ryan may speak about the deficit in apocalyptic terms, but even if you believe that his proposed spending cuts are feasible-- which you shouldn’t-- the Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich.

And I do mean slash. The Tax Policy Center finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population.

Finally, let’s talk about those spending cuts. In its first decade, most of the alleged savings in the Ryan plan come from assuming zero dollar growth in domestic discretionary spending, which includes everything from energy policy to education to the court system. This would amount to a 25 percent cut once you adjust for inflation and population growth. How would such a severe cut be achieved? What specific programs would be slashed? Mr. Ryan doesn’t say.

After 2020, the main alleged saving would come from sharp cuts in Medicare, achieved by dismantling Medicare as we know it, and instead giving seniors vouchers and telling them to buy their own insurance. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s the same plan Newt Gingrich tried to sell in 1995.

And we already know, from experience with the Medicare Advantage program, that a voucher system would have higher, not lower, costs than our current system. The only way the Ryan plan could save money would be by making those vouchers too small to pay for adequate coverage. Wealthy older Americans would be able to supplement their vouchers, and get the care they need; everyone else would be out in the cold.

In practice, that probably wouldn’t happen: older Americans would be outraged-- and they vote. But this means that the supposed budget savings from the Ryan plan are a sham.

So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power-- the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.