The majority of Americans seem to agree that our nation is headed for fiscal disaster, not only through their responses to polls taken by news organizations, but also through the most important poll--the one that was taken last Election Day. And, of course, think tanks like IPI and others have been warning for some time of the dangers of slow growth, high debt and inflation. So if a fiscal train wreck lies ahead of us, it would seem that dramatic changes in policy are necessary.
Enter the new Republican House majority’s budget proposal for FY2012. It’s a truly revolutionary document, proposing significant reforms that have as their sources ideas from a variety of places, including research published by IPI advocating block grants for Medicaid and “premium support,” which functions similar to a voucher, for Medicare.
"My worst experience was the financial crisis of September 2008," said Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, on Tuesday. "What if the president and your representative saw it coming and could have prevented it from happening? What would you think of them if they didn't?"
"This is the most predictable crisis in the history of our country," Ryan went on, drawing the obvious parallel to our current situation.
Republicans now hold the moral high ground on fiscal issues, taking an intellectually serious approach to solving our imminent fiscal problems. And the Ryan budget doesn’t savage the safety net, as some knee-jerk responses suggest. It rescues the safety net and ensures the continuation of social welfare policies through structural changes that preserve them and ensure their solvency.
By contrast, House Democrats didn’t even bother to pass a budget for FY2011. And President Obama’s recent budget proposal can best be described as a cynical cop-out, proposing increased spending levels and higher taxes, and assuming phantom revenue that everyone, including the Obama administration, knows will never happen.
When people say, “The Ryan budget is going nowhere,” they’re probably right, as least for now. But the real question is, why not? Who is standing in the way of fiscal sanity?