Those who accept the idea that entitlement reform is the
third rail of American politics should have to grapple with the
rise of Rep. Paul Ryan.
In the past year, Ryan has drawn a lot of heat for his
ambitious plan to confront our nation’s looming
entitlement crisis. Democrats from President Obama on down have
eviscerated his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” arguing it would
destroy Social Security and gut Medicare. Yet Ryan is expected to
coast to victory, just as he has in every election since he first
ran in favor of Social Security personal accounts twelve years ago.
And his constituents aren’t reflexively Republican. In fact, the
Cook Political Report
ranks his district as the 218th most Republican out of
435 Congressional districts, putting it smack in the
middle.
“I think you can campaign and win on these issues — I’m
proof of that,” Ryan told TAS in a phone interview on
Wednesday. “My district went for Clinton, Dukakis, Gore and Obama,
and I’ve campaigned on these issues, and I’ve won on these issues.
And my reelection average is 64 percent.”
At a time of national uproar over trillion dollar annual
deficits and out of control spending, one would think that
confronting the growth of entitlement programs would be a
no-brainer for the party that purports to represent limited
government philosophy. But Ryan’s growing political fame is due in
large part to the fact that he’s still an outlier, the lone
Republican with a plan to make America financially
solvent.
When asked how entitlement reform is playing out in this
year’s midterm elections, Ryan laughed. “It’s called mislead and
scare is how it’s playing out,” he said. Ryan noted how Republicans
throughout the nation have been blasted with attack ads claiming
they want to destroy Social Security and tear benefits away from
seniors.
“I don’t see Republicans necessarily running for the hills
away from entitlement reform, but I don’t necessarily see them
warmly embracing it, and that’s because in the silly season we are
in, they know they can’t have an honest conversation about this,”
he said. “I’ve seen campaigns around the country that have totally
embraced these ideas, and have stood up for them. And then there
are some who basically fight back in different ways against
Democratic opponents.”
Ryan is being charitable to his fellow Republicans. In a
year where Tea Party activists have swamped Republican primaries,
the tendency among GOP candidates is either to avoid a discussion
of entitlements, or, when attacked, respond by backing away from
reform.
For instance, Sarah Palin
endorsed Republican Paul Gosar in Arizona’s 1st
District, writing on Facebook that he “shares our belief that the
federal government’s reckless spending is putting us on a dangerous
path towards insolvency — and he’s determined to do something
about that.” Yet here’s what Gosar has to say about Social Security
on his
website: “In addition to opposing the
privatization of Social Security, I believe the retirement age
should not be raised.”
Meanwhile, in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District,
Republican candidate Scott Tipton has just run an
ad in which he’s surrounded by senior citizens and
attacks John Salazar for cutting Medicare as part of his vote for
the new national health care law. In the ad, Tipton vows, “I’ll
never put our seniors’ future at risk. No cuts, no privatization,
and no scaring our seniors just to try and win this
election.”
Tom Ganley, a Republican candidate for the seat in Ohio’s
13th Congressional District, takes this stand:
“My views on Social Security are simple. I believe the retirement
age should remain the same, that taxes should not be increased to
benefit the program, the program should not be privatized and above
all, the program should be protected.”
Even Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, who has
achieved conservative rock star status, has declared that the time
for personal accounts has “come
and gone” — a position that at one time would have been
grounds to brand him a RINO. (Though, in contrast to others, he has
spoken of raising the retirement age.)
More broadly speaking, the widely hyped “Pledge to
America” from House Republicans
barely mentioned entitlements.
“The ‘Pledge’ was not meant to be a new party platform, or
a comprehensive thing,” Ryan says in defense of his fellow
Republicans. “The concern in writing the pledge would be that we
would over-promise and under-deliver. That we would make promises
we can’t keep given Obama is the president. And given that we’ll
have divided government at best. And so the prevailing concern was
the need to be honest, and not to make promises we know we can’t
keep. Entitlement reform, the way we would do it, with Obama as
president, is not possible over the next two years, and that’s the
reason why it wasn’t in the ‘Pledge’ chief and
foremost.”
Ryan acknowledges that his desire for comprehensive
entitlement reform is far from a consensus position, even within
his own party. But his hope is that as a new crop of Republicans
will come to Washington having survived Democratic demagoguery and
that as a result they’ll be more willing to confront the issue.
That was his experience back in 1998, when he was elected for the
first time along with Pat Toomey and Jim DeMint.
“We knew we could survive these assaults, and so we
advocated these ideas in Congress,” Ryan said. “It made us better
and stronger and thicker skinned. You’re going to have dozens of
people like that in the next session of Congress, because they’re
running these ads against everybody, and dozens of these people are
going to win their campaigns, and they are going to see that the
bite is not that bad, or the bark is not that loud. And they’re
going to be battle-tested and seasoned in the next session. And so
I think it’s heading in the right direction.”
That said, Ryan predicts that the real battle over these
issues will be deferred until the presidential election.
“2010 is a proxy fight, or a shadow boxing match, to the
real fight in 2012,” Ryan said. “2012 is the fight for the soul of
America. What kind of country do we want to be in the 21st century?
Do we want to be a mediocre nation where we manage our decline like
Western Europe, and we become a cradle to grave welfare society, or
do we want to get the American idea back?”
But if there’s any hope of having a real debate over
entitlement reform — whether now or two years from now — at some
point, more candidates will have to be willing to force a
discussion on it.
“My experience in a very competitive district is if you
just own up to it, defend your ideas, people are fine,” Ryan said.
“They’re okay with it. They understand it. These things aren’t the
third rails they used to be.”
Republicans may want to start considering whether in
reality, entitlements are the paper tiger of American
politics.
