Paul Ryan: Would-Be Savior of the
Welfare-Warfare State
by
Sheldon Richman,
August 15, 2012
Paul Ryan may be the conservative’s conservative, but understand what
that means: He’s out to save the welfare/warfare state from its own
intrinsic unsustainability. He’s no small-government man.
Ryan’s budget blueprint, at best, wouldn’t balance the budget for three
decades and meanwhile would add trillions in debt. He would only
slow President Obama’s planned spending increases. If Ryan got his
way, spending as a percentage of GDP would fall only to 20 percent. It
was 18 percent when Bill Clinton left office in 2001. Ryan also wants
more military spending.
But there’s more to Ryan than his budget. In virtually all other respects
he supports big government.
In the Bush years, Ryan voted for everything: No Child Left Behind (which
increased the centralization of education), the Medicare drug
entitlement, housing subsidies, unemployment-benefits extension, the bank
bailouts, and the 2008 subsidies to failing Chrysler and GM. In voting
for TARP (the Trouble Asset Relief Program),
Ryan said, “Madam Speaker, this bill offends my principles, but I’m
going to vote for this bill in order to preserve my principles.”
Ryan is equally committed to intrusive government in other areas. He
supported Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, voting for all the
attendant big spending. When the House took votes on winding down the
occupation of Iraq, Ryan voted no. He’s an advocate of the American
empire, which endangers Americans physically and fiscally.
His voting record on civil liberties is horrendous. He voted to make the
USA PATRIOT Act, a collection of liberty-violating powers, permanent; he
voted for warrantless surveillance after Bush got caught doing it
illegally; and he voted for indefinite detention without trial or
charge.
How, then, can we explain Paul Ryan? The fiscal crisis is the key. Unless
the government reduces spending growth or raises more revenue (or does
both), in a few years the federal government will be able to pay for
nothing but interest on the debt. According to the Congressional Budget
Office, Social Security and Medicare are projected to account for over 40
percent of the federal budget by 2020 -- they’re at 37 percent now -- and
will continue to grow, consuming half the budget in 2030. Today, program
benefits exceed revenues. (Until recently the programs produced
surpluses, which the politicians spent.) Their alleged trust funds
contain Treasury IOUs that will have to be repaid with more borrowed
money and interest payments -- the full debt already surpasses GDP. The
75-year unfunded liability of the programs now stands conservatively at
over $30 trillion
(
PDF).
In other words, this can’t go on forever, and as economist Herb Stein
said, anything that can’t go on forever will stop.
No politician can be happy with that prospect. A budget spent entirely on
interest payments, Social Security, and Medicare would leave nothing for
war, occupation, and the other elements of an imperial foreign policy.
Nor would there be money to buy off constituencies at election time. A
politician with no discretionary funds at his disposal is an unhappy
politician, indeed. Hence the desperation to do something.
The politicians’ problem is that there is not a lot they can do. The
public appetite for deep budget cuts is nonexistent. Even tea partiers
say don’t touch Medicare and Social Security. Conservatives don’t like
cuts in military spending. Mitt Romney’s choice of Ryan as running mate
implies that he thinks people are ready for a seeming budget hawk (even
though Ryan really isn’t one), but that may turn out to be a fatal
error.
Nor can the government get out of its mess by raising taxes. Not only are
higher taxes a bad idea in a floundering economy (and any other time),
revenues as a percentage of GDP have been steady since World War II (not
counting recessions), regardless of tax rates. That means higher rates
merely stimulate avoidance, evasion, and leisure over income-producing
activity.
Now we can see what Ryan stands for. At its most optimistic, his budget
plan would merely stabilize the government’s fiscal condition at higher
levels of spending without making any significant change in the
welfare/warfare state.
Our freedom and prosperity, however, require that government be radically
shrunk which demands liquidation of the empire, respect for civil
liberties, and conversion of entitlements to mutual-aid and other private
organizations.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1208l.asp
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