Since Paul Ryan recently released his budget proposal, the praise from the right and many in the media has tended to gravitate towards two adjectives: "courageous" and "serious." It's difficult to think of two words which are less applicable to Ryan's budget than those.
Let's begin with "courageous."
Ryan's budget certainly puts many federal programs on the chopping block, including Medicare. That sounds courageous- Medicare is, after all, quite popular among seniors. According to a 2009 Kaiser Foundation study, 56% of seniors enrolled in "fee for service" Medicare ranked Medicare a 9 or 10 on a 10 point scale (far higher than the ranking private health plan enrollees gave to their medical insurance). 60% of seniors enrolled in a Medicare Managed Care plan rated their plan a 9 or 10. Furthermore, seniors vote in high percentages. In the 2008 presidential election, for example, 70% of individuals age 65 and over (the age of Medicare eligibility) voted, compared to 46% of those aged 18-24.
So- Ryan proposed draconian cuts to a program that is very popular among individuals who are highly probably to vote. Brave, right? Not exactly.
While Medicare is popular among seniors, its popularity drops quickly among younger age demographics. Ryan understands this point perfectly, which is precisely why his proposed cuts to Medicare would not go into effect until 2022 and would not affect anyone age 55 or older. Ryan is hoping that seniors who vote won't be as concerned about changes to their plans which don't go into effect for more than a decade. He is also banking on political support from younger groups which already dislike Medicare, the most notable of these groups being the Tea Party which has helped propel Ryan to stardom.
Tea Party members have shown tremendous enthusiasm for voting, and, in a remarkably short period of time, have captured control of the primary process in many states. Tea Party leaders have stated repeatedly and loudly that they expect Republicans to eliminate the federal deficit and make drastic cuts to the federal debt. Neither of those goals can easily be met without significant changes to Medicare. Ryan's proposal is designed to generate sufficient enthusiasm among non-senior voters, and particularly the Tea Party members, to more than offset any vote losses among the senior population.
Ryan's plan, of course, involves much more than cuts to Medicare. If you want to guess where the rest of the cuts are directed, start with programs that help the poor. They amount to 2/3 of all of Ryan's proposed cuts. Meanwhile, his budget would completely preserve intact the Bush tax cuts, which primarily serve the wealthy. As if this weren't enough to draw applause from his conservative base, Ryan also proposes to overturn the Affordable Care Act (even though such a move would add significantly to the deficit), and portions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
Ryan's plan isn't courageous, it's calculating.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe Ryan is strictly principled and is taking a courageous political stand. Is it a stand worth taking? Well, that depends on whether his plan is "serious," the second adjective many have used to describe his budget proposal.
The fact that Ryan's plan seeks to curb federal spending during a period of high unemployment and low growth isn't a great start on the path to "serious" status. Setting that aside for the moment, however, would Ryan's plan make sense in a time of economic prosperity?
The federal budget funds policy. If America believes it needs a stronger military, the budget can allocate the funds to build a stronger military. If the nation needs to repair a crumbling infrastructure, the budget can allocate those resources. Eliminating spending for a program is more than just redirecting dollars- it is redirecting policy. That doesn't make the act of redirecting dollars inappropriate. Policy can and must change over time- but it does mean real thought needs to go into the decision to redirect dollars with an understanding of how it will impact policy.
Ryan's budget demonstrates an ability to write lower numbers but an inability (or unwillingness) to understand the impact of those lower numbers. It's as if you were to hand a child a marker and tell them to cross out words in a legal contract to make it shorter. The final version of the contract would have far fewer words in it, but it also would have no real meaning or purpose.
Ryan took the easy task of lowering numbers. Anyone can do that. I can do that. It's the antithesis of "serious."
Take his cuts to Medicare, for example. First, Ryan proposes to increase the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67. That does save money. It also means people aged 65-67 will no longer be eligible for a government medical plan that seniors currently love. Ryan solves that problem by transforming the current plan into one which nobody will love, so those aged 65-67 really won't be missing much. Ryan would effectively privatize Medicare, giving each senior eligible for Medicare a "voucher" to purchase their own private insurance. That sounds dandy, but Ryan makes sure it isn't by ensuring the voucher value grows at a slower historical rate than health care costs. So, each year that passes makes the voucher the government issues proportionately smaller, thereby shifting proportionately more of the burden for the health care costs away from the government and onto seniors- right at the moment in their life when health insurance costs are the most expensive and they have no employment income.
Ryan's propensity to cut dollars from programs that provide critical services to the vulnerable is repeated again and again, in each instance merely shifting the responsibility for the payment of the service to the individual or group being served. Ryan has somehow missed the reason that those services exist: most people receiving the services can't pay for them. Why give out food stamps to the poor when they could just buy their food? Why have federal housing programs when the poor could just buy a house? Why fund Medicare when seniors could just buy their own insurance? Why pay for job training when poor people could buy it themselves? These are the questions implicit in the Ryan budget, and in each instance, the Ryan budget finds it appropriate to make the cost shift to the poor person receiving the service. It's asinine. When compared to the treatment of the rich in Ryan's budget, it's downright offensive.
Take something like the mortgage interest deduction, for example. The deduction encourages the purchase of a home (which, for a lot of reasons, doesn't make a lot of sense as a policy matter) by giving a tax break to itemizing taxpayers. The more income a person has to offset, and the higher the mortgage amount, the greater the federal subsidy to the taxpayer. The poor cannot benefit from the mortgage interest deduction- they do not have sufficient income to offset with a deduction. This massive subsidy for the wealthyremains unscathed in Ryan's plan. So, too, do the Bush tax cuts (which overwhelmingly favor the rich). Rest assured, Ryan's budget also leaves corporate welfare alone (indeed, corporations- and the top individual income earners- would each get a tax cut from 35% to 25%).
Ryan's plan is seriously flawed, seriously unjust, and seriously ill-conceived. That's as close to "serious" as his plan will ever get.