Yesterday The American Spectator and Americans for Tax
Reform hosted a breakfast with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of
the House Budget Committee, and the Republican
point man on budget reform. The gathering was moderated by
TAS’s publisher, Al Regnery.
Representing one of the most Democratic and unionized
district in the country, located in southeastern Wisconsin,
Chairman Ryan is serving his seventh term. He is unique in being
the only elected official, the President included, to offer a
comprehensive reform of entitlements, health care and taxation,
sans tax increases, in the form of “A Roadmap for America’s
Future.”
“We are headed for a fiscal cliff,” stated the
Congressman, starkly, in his opening remarks. “Everyone in town
recognizes we have a debt crisis except the President,” who is
promoting tax increases based on the faulty assumption that the
problem is insufficient revenue rather than excess
spending.
Ryan is clearly focused on getting control of trillions of
dollars of expenditures not just billions. He wants “to go after
the drivers of our debt” which means entitlement reform. In fact,
he insists that the Republicans will actually make such proposals
regardless of the political heat it will, inevitably, generate.
This will necessitate a massive public education campaign to
communicate to voters the causes and consequences of our current
predicament.
Is entitlement reform a third-rail issue? “We aren’t in
the conventional moment,” opined the Budget Chairman. Spending has
escalated so much, the European sovereign debt crises are so
visible, that “we are obliged to offer an alternative vision,”
notwithstanding the heated controversy which will
result.
Congressman Ryan’s most interesting remarks, at least for
this listener, was his characterization of the current fiscal
crisis as more than just an economic one. It is also a question of
cultural self-definition. The current Administration’s push towards
an American version of a kind of European social democracy, with
cradle to grave entitlements, “is not who we are,” said the
Representative from Janesville, Wisconsin. His goal is to restore
“an opportunity society with a safety net.”
“At the end of the day, it is a cultural thing,” claimed
Ryan. The choice is between a government-subsidized hammock or an
ethic of self-reliance. He framed the question as, “What kind of
people do we want to be?” The government should not be providing
entitlement rights for able-bodied people but simply assuring them
equal opportunity, not equality of results.
Criticizing President Obama for his “fundamental
unseriousness” on the issues of spending, debt and entitlement, the
Congressman expressed his astonishment that, unlike the TARP
controversy, a tremendous shock and surprise to the political
system, we can see this crisis coming and have seen it for some
time. The President knows about this ahead of time but chooses “not
to do anything about it.”
“If we shy away from this moment [of crisis], it is
immoral,” stated Ryan. Fortunately, “The country is ready for
leadership.” Indeed, he believes the congressional Democrats will
have a hard time opposing budget cuts. “Defending their spending
binge is an indefensible position.”
Chairman Ryan is a very upbeat person and this attitude is
reflected in his general sense that, despite inevitable
disagreements within the GOP caucus, including the insistence of
the freshman class that budget cuts be very aggressive (a position
with which he is very comfortable it seems), the debate now centers
on what to cut rather than what to spend. He believes the culture
is changing even on the Appropriations Committee where several
outstanding freshmen, “cutters” as he calls them, are now members.
He cited an old Wisconsin farm breakfast maxim, chickens are
involved, but pigs are committed. The frosh are committed! They are
here for a cause, not just to be somebody. “They are doers, not
just be-ers [sic].” He also views the new congressional
class as generally “fantastic.”
He notes that real progress can be seen since the budget,
pursuant to the new Continuing Resolution, is now below 2010
levels, below the President’s so-called “floor” at last. He
foresees further progress if there are subsequent CRs, lopping off
another $4 billion each time one passes. He indicated that the
White House was willing to accept an $8 billion cut for an entire
month. He calls this unfolding process, the “Rolling
Fours.”
There are, it seems, more than one way to skin a
cat.
While seeking to manage expectations as to what can be
accomplished in the face of a Democratic Senate and White House,
again, he wants to “focus on the big picture,” the trillions of
dollars that need to be saved through reform of the budget process
and entitlements, over the long haul, not just the billions of
dollars in this or that individual program in any given fiscal
year.
Moreover, health care inflation and demographic shifts,
i.e., aging, are the biggest drivers of our current crisis. He
argues for “not just one single reform,” but many that will
transform the health care system into one that is consumer-driven
and grounded in market principles. Ryan believes such a system
would improve quality and drive down costs.
After noting a range of policy initiatives — statutory
spending caps and a drive for accrual accounting, for instance —
Chairman Ryan focused on the ultimate problem caused by the Obama
Administration’s seemingly endless spending and taxing with its
inexorable negative impact on business investment and job creation.
Citing the late Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman, he
observed that “Today’s deficits are tomorrow’s tax increases.” This
self-evident truth, not lost on the nation’s business leaders,
creates uncertainty in the economy and depresses risk-taking and
investment. To put it another way, Ryan said that spending and
endless, massive borrowing “come at the expense of long-term
growth.”
Thus, Chairman Ryan aims to reverse this systematic bias
away from spending and redirect it towards real budget cutting and
substantive reform. The man and the moment, it seems, have
met.
