

Conservatives all over the place are upset about Paul Ryan’s budget plan, idealistically called “The Path to Prosperity.” This year’s Ryan budget is basically recycled from last year, which sought only to cut spending and taxes, and relied on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Ryan is currently chairman of the House Budget Committee, so coming up with a budget plan is part of his job, however, with so many conservatives slamming him for it, one would think he’d come up with something else.

Some are concerned about numbers. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says that Ryan’s plan is too focused on cuts to discretionary spending without taking into account the fact that only 33% or so of the federal budget is appropriations, and that’s already been cut by $100 billion in the last two years.

Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, who also served as an aide to George W. Bush, wonders why the Ryan plan doesn’t consider new revenue at all, and points out the fact that, without new revenue, and with delayed implementation of Medicare reforms, the plan amounts to impossible cuts in the budget, particularly to discretionary spending and the social safety net. He further comments that the plan demonstrates ideology, rather than constructively addressing real human and economic needs.





Others are worried about the budget being so unpopular that it will cost the GOP more seats in the House and Senate, and the presidency in 2016. GOP strategist Dick Morris is upset about messing too much with Medicare and Medicaid, and wonders why the party would consider putting forth a budget plan that balances the budget quickly at the expense of elections all up and down the line for the next decade.

Americans rejected the proposed policies of the Romney-Ryan campaign back in November, and Paul Ryan has not learned enough of a lesson from that. He softens the tone of his budget, yes, attempting to make it sound as though he thinks of nothing but helping the people it will affect, but it’s essentially the same budget plan he keeps trumpeting as the “Path to Prosperity.”

Conservative economist Peter Morici writes that reforming Medicare by providing subsidies to seniors so they can choose their own health care plans, enabling them to shop for insurance policies from competing providers for the purpose of driving down costs, will actually result in seniors have significantly reduced access to health care due to limited choices and/or monopolies on drugs and hospitals, and too little information available to navigate the complex waters of choosing a good health plan.

He also writes that reforming Medicaid by turning it into a block grant program to the states, ostensibly to also drive down costs, will result in unsustainable cost increases to the states. Big business hasn’t been able to bring down the cost of health insurance despite the competition and negotiations they engage in when choosing policies for their employees, so why would the states and seniors under similar programs?

Morici understands that the free-market ideal that inflexible Republicans like Ryan cling to doesn’t always work. If it did, everything would be privatized and we’d have the smallest set of governments ever, because competition would keep prices in check and quality at its highest, rendering a lot of types of regulation pointless. He points to the disaster that deregulation of electric utilities was, in states like California, as an example of why the market doesn’t always work.

Surprisingly, he looks at Germany’s healthcare system as one that the ACA is starting to look like. Germany’s system is a combination of private care and government subsidies, except, unlike here, Germany heavily regulates the price of health services with consensus-building and price caps.

How positively un-American.

But it works, far better than what we have here. To summarize what Morici is trying to say; if Ryan wants to cut healthcare spending significantly, he should embrace the ACA and attempt to steer it towards a system that looks more like Germany’s.

As far as taxes and the economy go, Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan seem to think that lowering taxes always spurs economic growth, and they cherry-pick the eight years of Reagan’s presidency as absolute proof of that. But, looking at a much bigger picture, say, the last 60 years, there’s actually very little correlation between tax rates and both economic growth and job growth. Furthermore, the severe spending cuts he wants amount to an austerity package, which, as we saw in Greece and the U.K., is a recipe for recession when the economy hasn’t yet fully recovered.

People like Morici, Morris, and others are right to be concerned about the party’s competitiveness with intransigent, inflexible people like Ryan steering budgetary policy and other policy. They’re still doing their we’ve-got-the-right-message-but-it’s-not-being-delivered-properly dance. Perhaps Brent Bozell, a conservative activist who spoke at CPAC, said it best: “Do yourself and your country a favor: take that budget back and return with a new one.”

Rika Christensen is an experienced writer and loves debating politics. Engage with her and see more of her work by following her on Facebook and Twitter, and check out her blog, They Need To Go.