Paul Ryan on Fixing Entitlements
Rep. Paul Ryan: "We’re really on the cusp of trading our free market democracy, the American idea, for a cradle-to-grave social welfare state that will bankrupt us."
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Saturday, March 27, 2010
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
Previous Posts
- 100-Point Increase in SAT = $2,350 for Egg Donors
- There Are No Other Major Retailers Willing to Come...
- Why Inflation Concerns Are Overblown: Annual M2 Gr...
- Markets in Everything: Lost iPod Touch Bidding War
- 3 Reasons Healthcare Reform Won't Cut Deficit
- Jobless Claims (4-wk. Avg.) Fall to 18-Month Low
- Markets in Everything: Market-Based Beer and Food ...
- Durable Goods Orders Increase for Third Month
- Job Approval of the 111th Congress: Only 17.4%
- U.S. Financial Markets Return to Pre-Crisis Levels
32 Comments:
Healthcare issues aside, he appears willing to sell the country and its sovereignty to "save" it. That is, he is willing to sell it to Third World enemies.
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
Garet Garrett--1938
Paul Ryan for president. Cut the size of the federal government in half. Handcuff them with Constitutional amendments to keep them to no more than 12% of GDP, and force them to pay off the debt. Forbid the federal government from requiring citizens to purchase any good or service.
It's frightening that the best plan we have is to balance the budget in 60+ years. and it's super controversial! WTF?
"Healthcare issues aside"?
Why don't you try to stick to the subject of the post? Would make a welcome change from the usual protectionist rant.
"...if we are looking at major threats to our global standing, we should not look at China, Iran or Russia. We have met the enemy and he is us—specifically, our insatiable demand for entitlement spending, which ObamaCare will only exacerbate."
If you want to slam Paul Ryan, at least provide some shred of credible evidence to support your spurious claims.
Thanks QT. People like to pretend for some reason that the liabilities the US has are somehow NOT a two way street.
We had to actually do the debt spending to be in order to be indebted to the Chinese, Japanese, etc.
Ryan, unlike *some* get that one of our biggest national security risks is just plain old solvency.
Obama the Republican:
The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.
Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as "a personal responsibility principle" and Massachusetts' newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it. Romney now says Obama's plan is a federal takeover that bears little resemblance to what he did as governor and should be repealed.
Republicans say Obama and the Democrats co-opted their original concept, minus a mechanism they proposed for controlling costs. More than a dozen GOP attorneys general are determined to challenge the requirement in federal court as unconstitutional...
Conservatives today say that's unacceptable. Not long ago, many of them saw a national mandate as a free-market route to guarantee coverage for all Americans – the answer to liberal ambitions for a government-run entitlement like Medicare...
In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon favored a mandate that employers provide insurance. In the 1990s, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, embraced an individual requirement. Not anymore.
"The idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was a Republican idea," said health economist Mark Pauly of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1991, he published a paper that explained how a mandate could be combined with tax credits – two ideas that are now part of Obama's law. Pauly's paper was well-received – by the George H.W. Bush administration.
Romney's success in Massachusetts with a bipartisan health plan that featured a mandate put the idea on the table for the 2008 presidential candidates...
Brown, whose election to replace the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy almost led to the collapse of Obama's plan, said his opposition to the new law is over tax increases, Medicare cuts and federal overreach on a matter that should be left up to states. Not so much the requirement, which he voted for as a state lawmaker.
"In Massachusetts, it helped us deal with the very real problem of uncompensated care," Brown said.
Rep. Ryan is a true leader. When I was growing up people used the phrase "there ought to be a law...". Now I am fearful that it has become "there ought to be funding for...".
Anon.,
Is claiming it's a Republican idea done for the purpose of blame shifting, suggesting that Obamacare represents a bi-partisan consensus or suggesting that somehow Obamacare makes good sense? Romneycare has certainly raised health insurance costs to the highest in the U.S. which would seem to suggest such an approach should be adopted nationally.
Call me skeptical but I find it difficult to believe that every provision in a bill over 2,500pages long was once a Republican idea.
Why need for non-sequitirs when the budgetary implications of this public policy are raised?
Correction:
Romneycare has certainly raised health insurance costs to the highest in the U.S. which would seem to suggest such an approach should NOT be adopted nationally.
Apologies for the confusion.
Odd, how he never expressed these sentiments about our huge rural welfare system that feeds the Red State Socialist Empire, the subsidized roads, water and power systems, telephone service, airports, railroad stops and crop subsidies.
Is Paul Ryan just another BS Republican--as in "Borrow and Spend."?
What would he cut to balance the budget?
And why does not Ryan ever call for Milton Firedman's favorite tax--the progessive consumption tax--to balance the budget?
How about eliminating the home mortgage interest tax deduction, as Friedman suggested?
Oh, I guess those true right-wing ideas are not the ones we want to talk about.
Thanks for the red herring, Benny.
The fact that some Republicans have advocated thoroughly statist measures -- such as a mandate -- is simply proof that Republicans have not been consistent defenders of freedom. To argue that this fact means it is now justified to ram a mandate down our throats is an utterly lame non sequitur -- it is an “argument“ so weak it ought to embarrass anyone who resorts to it.
Nor does the existence of the rest of the welfare state justify its further expansion. Two wrongs don’t make a right -- and the fact that our rights are violated to support a massive and unsustainable welfare state certainly doesn’t justify a further violation of those rights via government extinguishing the last remaining elements of freedom in the healthcare market.
The entire welfare state is a monstrously unjust looting of the nation’s earners to pay for unearned benefits to others. Yes, the situation is complicated by the fact that some of the beneficiaries of the welfare state -- such as many Social Security and Medicare recipients -- were also formerly victims who paid taxes into the system for decades. But past looting cannot justify current looting -- and the entire welfare system needs to be dismantled, piece by piece, in a manner that gives those currently dependent on it time to find another way.
The path to this dismantling must begin with cutting Federal spending back to what it was before the beginning of the disastrous Bush administration. The level of spending we had under Clinton would produce huge budget surpluses given today’s tax collections -- and with a few years of massive surpluses in hand, we could begin to dismantle Social Security and Medicare without hurting the elderly.
The alternative of continuing on our current path is eventual economic collapse and total chaos -- and THAT will prove devastating to the elderly and everyone else.
This comment has been removed by the author.
This comment has been removed by the author.
If you wish to dismantle it, be sure that you do not make the problem worse.
If the best social program is a job, it would be time to turn the US into a job-seeker's market. To that end, you cannot just simply dismantle things and expect order.
A more proactive approach should be taken to (if possible) making it impossible to refuse US citizens for work. The best you can do is to make it possible for those on government programs be able to find, hold, and maintain gainful employment (which fully uses their skills and isn't a permatemp/contract job).
For those who are indeed disabled, maintain programs for which allow them to live with dignity.
Just dismantling it only makes for very bad policy. You are condemning people that are not market-positive to a fate worse than death. You will be responsible for an increased lack of law, order and respect for US citizenship(beyond existing efforts).
Further:
No immigration law should be usable until they have gainful employment that uses their talents and skills (irrespective of formal education level) to the absolute fullest.
QT said...
Well, you asked for me to get closer to the subject, and I have. If you want to reduce dependence on government programs, make it harder for businesses to dump people on them. Whether such comes in the form of:
• overextending unemployment (without trying to resolve it proactively - education can only go so far)
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Other programs
..the government should not be a dumping ground for market-negative people.
Red Herring?
Okay, let' see: The huge entitlement programs are paid for by payroll taxes--on the first $100k of income.
Of federal income taxes, about 70 percent is eaten up by Dep't of Defense, VA, USDA, Homeland Security and Interior and debt payments.
You want to balance the budget? Okay, how?
If you say "cut entitlements," then fine--but that should mean a cut in payroll taxes. Fine with me.
You want to cut federal income taxes? Well, see above programs. Start cutting dude. You will, in fact, find a lot of waste.
Also, remember this: We will spend about $15 trillion in the next 10 years of "national defense." Obama healthcare program (of which I am not a fan) will be $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
I do predict one thing: At the end of the 10 years, there will be hue and cry that Obama's health plan does not do enough, and there will solemn statements from the Defense Department, that although we just spent $15 trillion, it is still not enough, we need to spend more and more and more.
A more proactive approach should be taken to (if possible) making it impossible to refuse US citizens for work ...
You repeat this same jingoistic gibberish in post after post, is it a form of tourettes syndrome? What is it? Do you own a business? How many Americans do you employ? Or, do just run around accusing people who do own businesses, and struggle to keep them viable, of treason?
The country is bankrupt. Your leftist friends have mortgaged our children's and grandchildren's futures. The Ponzi schemes they set up generations ago are on the verge of collapse, leaving millions vulnerable in their old age. Do you get that?
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
– Abraham Lincoln
Reagan debates Obama
Or, do just run around accusing people who do own businesses, and struggle to keep them viable, of treason?
The problem is that people who make a political statement w/ creative interpretations of employment law also hide amongst the honest businesses. That is, honest businesses being those who follow the law to the letter and interpretation.
You don't taxpayers by killing off work and allowing it to simply go elsewhere. By doing that, you've only made the case for entitlement stronger(since you have no interest in considering US citizens as market-positive).
It's not asking work to be done for work's sake - it's that you actively refuse to find a US citizen to do it(and be subject to the resulting market forces, even if upward).
That's why it's a problem to see "declining" unemployment figures in absence of work. That's why I oppose offshoring in its current iteration. You are contributing to a problem that you refuse to fix.
Anon:
That Ronald Reagan was a terrific speaker, and I enjoy his pro-business stance.
All the same, he was the progenitor of the "BS Republicans," the Borrow and Spend Elephants.
Give unto m the real Republicans, a breed that died out with Everett Dirksen, and Robert Taft and President Eisenhower. They ran balanced budgets, even if the top federal tax rates in the 1950s was 90 percent.
They paid down WWII borrowing, allowing later generations less burden.
Now we just add burdens onto the next generation.
Eisenhower was the last R-Party President to even propose a balanced federal budget. That was more than 50 years ago.
There is a way out of this mess--less government spending, and a progressive consumption tax, of the type favored by Milton Friedman.
I see no one in the R-Party willing to take the baton.
anon @ 3/27/2010 12:34 PM says: "The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades"...
Where did that come from? Not from the link you labled as 'Obama the Republican'...
It seems you're quoting from the always questionable A P Writer "RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR"...
So when does Ryan repudiate his lifetime pension and lifetime medical benefits, a nice little deal for members of Congress?
My only comments are
a) that Paul Ryan understates the case. We won't be bankrupt in the future... WE ARE BANKRUPT NOW!
b) Regarding the comment about the best we can do is to balance the budget in 60+ years... well, in fact our leaders have been digging us into this hole for for nearly 80 years and even though the know they're in a hole, they keep adding more unsustainable entitlement spending in a shameless effort to buy votes.
Benny the Man @3/27/2010 7:23 PM
Eisenhower was the last R-Party President to even propose a balanced federal budget. That was more than 50 years ago.
Actually, Nixon ran a surplus in FY1969. For 1970, with mandated expenditures rising and the economy wobbling, he proclaimed to the nation, "I shall take the action I consider necessary to present a balanced budget."
Congress saw things a bit differently.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942131,00.html
Seth, consumers seeking the lowest price is no different than producers seeking the lowest cost.
I don't see you attacking consumers, who demand lower prices. With so much work that needs to be done, why force people to waste their time performing unnecessary work?
"So when does Ryan repudiate his lifetime pension and lifetime medical benefits, a nice little deal for members of Congress?"...
Maybe on the same day that union officials repudiate their's...
Always remember that Benji, who routinely uses the "Red State Socialist" smear, voted for the nitwit President currently bankrupting the country, nationalizing industries, and fighting Bush's wave of debt with a massive tsunami of debt.
"Eisenhower was the last R-Party President to even propose a balanced federal budget. That was more than 50 years ago."
The worst deficit under a Republican Congress was one yr during Bush's presidency at $400 billion. Under the Pelosi Democrats, we're running $1.5 trillion for a few years, and projections of trillion dollar deficits for as far as they eye can see.
What say you to that, Benji?
SS-
I don't know if you are still reading, but technically, you are incorrect. The fiscal 1969 budget was proposed by LBJ. RN did not propose that budget, but administered the last half of it (in those days, the fiscal year started on July 1).
From Wiki:
Johnson also pushed for Congressional enactment of a surtax as well as other tax increases which allowed him to leave office in 1969 with a balanced budget (plus a small surplus) on the books. This was the last time the United States would see a balanced budget for nearly three decades.
]Nixon and Carter
Deficit spending resumed under Richard Nixon, who had become president by the time that the 1969 surplus was known. Nixon's advisors chose to fight inflation rather than to maintain a balanced budget. Nixon was famously quoted as saying, "We are all Keynesians now," with regard to the budget deficit that his administration began to accumulate during years of mild recession. (He also imposed the first peacetime wage and price controls, mandatory petroleum allotments, and many other features of a planned economy).
"Johnson also pushed for Congressional enactment of a surtax as well as other tax increases which allowed him to leave office in 1969 with a balanced budget (plus a small surplus) on the books"...
ROFLMAO!
Yeah pseudo benny, never let the facts get in the way of your reality...
Always strikes me as fascinating that someone would attempt to prove a point by quoting wiki.
Post a Comment
<< Home