Romney Veers Right with Ryan Choice

By succumbing to conservative pressure, Governor Romney could find that choosing Paul Ryan may have passed fiscal control of his presidency to his running-mate. If they are elected, Ryan may wind up defining Romney. The latter has embraced Ryan’s budget, saying last March, “I’m very supportive of the Ryan budget plan” and elsewhere calling it “excellent work”. “I think it’d be marvelous if the Senate were to pick up Paul Ryan’s budget and adopt it and pass it along to the President,” Romney said after the House had voted for Ryan’s plan. Those accolades will make it difficult for Romney to walk back some of Ryan’s Draconian prescriptions; to do so would risk accusations of betrayal, much as liberals became angry with Obama for not pressing for the ”change” he promised.

Ryan is a devoté of Ayn Rand, saying in 2005, “if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand” as the reason he entered public service. Rand celebrated success, championed the individualism of each of us providing for self and looked upon those unable to stand on their own as “parasites”. “And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism,” Ryan has said. Recently, politics has dictated that he retrench from these views somewhat. The problem is that Rand was an atheist.

But “unplugged”, as he once called what he would do were he free of political accommodations, Ryan would roll back social programs to the vanishing point. His first foray into budgeting was to draft a counter to the Democrats’ budget in 2007, but as Ryan Lizza’s profile in the New Yorker tells us, it was so extreme that 40 Republicans broke ranks and voted against it.

That was before the Tea Party.

Ryan has since bent to political reality enough to become the standard bearer for conservative Republicans’ quest to rid the country of Roosevelt’s hated Social Security and Johnson’s Medicare and Medicaid. Ryan had gained enough ground to — along with Eric Cantor — pressure President Bush, right after his re-election, to campaign in 2005 for allowing Social Security payroll taxes to be diverted into private accounts. That was so unsuccessful that Bush, thinking he had a mandate for just such changes, instead saw his poll ratings collapse.

Lesson learned, if only for the moment, Ryan issued his “Path to Prosperity” in early 2011, the basis for the budgets that the House has voted and for Romney’s applause. In “Path”, Ryan veered away from Social Security changes. But there is no sign that he thinks any differently, and if he takes the seat of the nation’s #2, we can expect him to challenge Social Security again.

The end of Medicare

What drew the most attention in “Path to Prosperity” is Ryan’s plans for Medicare. Entirely replacing the current system, seniors would be issued coupons toward buying health coverage from private insurers instead of automatic coverage by the government. Made to shop for best plans, the theory goes, oldsters would instill competition that would drive insurance costs down and medical costs in turn, although that effect is not at all in evidence after decades of rising premium costs from those same private insurers currently serving the non-Medicare age groups. For this reason, Ryan’s notions of competition as justification is viewed by liberals as simply a subterfuge to mask his real intent of destroying Medicare.

An analysis of Ryan’s budget projections immediately revealed that seniors would have to pay an estimated average of $6,000 a year from their own pockets — the estimate by which the cost of policies would exceed the “premium support” coupons paid by Medicare — and that the value of the coupons would decline over the years, relative to expected medical costs, leaving seniors to pay an ever higher portion of the insurance bill.

The Ryan proposal immediately brought to mind the specter of the elderly, their mental acuity often in disrepair, trying to sort out the tangles of insurance plans. Republicans faced acrimonious town hall confrontations when they went home to their districts a year ago spring after “Path” was released. Polling ran 58% to 35% against.

There was also the question of why there should be an enormous windfall for private insurers, who will add a layer of marketing and administrative costs, hefty executive paychecks, and profit to their premiums — costs that do not exist in Medicare.

The proposal compares to the Obama administration’s having done nothing — not even discussing — the looming bankruptcy of Medicare. Obama ignored the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission which dealt with the Medicare crisis, even though it was a study he had asked for. Apparently, the White House is averse to bringing up the uncomfortable subject called reality. That could cost votes among those who somehow think nothing should change, which is irresponsible and self-serving by Obama, placing Medicare at risk of the certain bankruptcy that awaits on the current trajectory.

Both Ryan, Romney and Republicans in general would begin by repealing the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats view as Obama’s principal achievement. The House has let us know that there is no uncertainty in their resolve by voting for its repeal 31 times. The mantra Is “repeal and replace”, but in the over two years since passage of “Obamacare”, no alternative plan has been put forth by Republicans.

Romney/Ryan would also repeal the Dodd-Frank reforms, the safeguards intended to avoid another financial collapse.

Both Romney and Ryan want still more tax cuts. They would reduce the tax schedule to just two brackets, 10% and 25%, in place of brackets that now range to 35%. Their claim is that the government would sustain no loss because the revenue shortfall would be offset by the elimination of loopholes and deductions. But neither candidate will specify which. We have here shown that the only specifics Romney once mentioned do not come anywhere near to offsetting his proposed tax cuts. Romney’s and Ryan’s only hope of making the tax rate cuts “revenue neutral” requires an end to the two biggest “tax expenditures”, thus raising taxes for the middle class: elimination of the mortgage interest deduction, and taxing the value of company-paid health insurance plans. Both are apparently deemed unmentionable.

Corporate tax rates would be cut from 35% to 25% and shift to a “territorial” scheme. Companies would pay taxes only on profits earned in the United States, They would pay no taxes on profits derived from foreign operations.

Ryan would also cancel Medicaid outright, replacing it with block grants to states to do with as they judge. His sharp reductions of government income would make deep cuts to safety net programs such as food stamps — which seem to be a particular bête noire for him — as well as job training and Pell grants to students.

Ryan is regularly spoken of as the nicest of guys, which makes the severity of his policies puzzling to some. A New York Times profile in April quoted David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who retired from the House in 2010: “What amazes me is that someone that nice personally has such a cold, almost academic view of what the impact of his policies would be on people.”

election calculus

Instant pundits were quick to say that Romney’s choice would doom his chances in Florida, where the prospect for seniors of shopping for private company insurance plans with Ryan coupons holds little appeal. But the Romney camp might do well targeting the young, who have little conception of what awaits decades ahead and can easily be stirred to anger over hefty percentages taken from their paychecks — the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes that pay the benefits to generations decades apart from them.