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Paul Ryan’s Budget Isn’t Popular With the Liberty Movement

By Daniel McCarthy • March 21, 2013, 12:46 PM

Ten House Republicans voted against Paul Ryan’s budget today, including key liberty movement leaders Justin Amash, Walter Jones, and Thomas Massie. The other nays were Paul Broun, Rick Crawford, Randy Forbes, Chris Gibson, Phil Gingrey, Joe Heck, and David McKinley.

The budget passed the House, but whether it’s really “popular” with anyone is an open question. Ross Douthat called the plan a “step backward,” a judgment seconded by quite a few movement conservatives. Perhaps tellingly, Ryan finished fifth in CPAC’s straw poll last weekend, behind the uninvited and vilified Chris Christie.

11 Responses to Paul Ryan’s Budget Isn’t Popular With the Liberty Movement

Adam says:

March 21, 2013 at 2:28 pm

Ryan’s budget is unpopular with people that can do math and actually read and comprehend the books with which he supposedly constructs his economic views.
DavidT says:

March 21, 2013 at 2:57 pm

The problem with the liberty movement is that the sort of budget they want would be even more unpopular with the American people than the Ryan budget.
JB says:

March 21, 2013 at 4:00 pm

DavidT, I share your concern that the spending cuts which are plainly necessary would be unpopular with a large swathe of the American electorate.

But we cannot give up on balancing the budget and stopping the annual addition of yet more debt, or else we have abandoned our country to insolvency and probably greatly increased poverty and civil unrest.

Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alike are all unavoidable if we are serious about ever balancing the budget. Many people will never accept such cuts, and our trying to make those cuts will surely motivate them to vote and donate and rally (and maybe riot) against our proposals and our candidates.

But there are some Americans who might be more open to cutting non-military spending if we did the fair, realistic thing and also made major cuts to military spending at the same time. In fact, if the parties cannot get their act together and abolish some specific unconstitutional and/or ineffective federal agencies/programs, then let’s have another sequester, and another, and another. Force all federal entities, including the armed forces and all welfare-state agencies, to cut several percent of their budgets every year for a long series of years.
William Dalton says:

March 21, 2013 at 4:50 pm

I was sent this link to Rand Paul’s proposed budget, which may be the alternative favored by the “Liberty Movement”:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/85637138/SENATOR-RAND-PAUL-A-PLATFORM-TO-REVITALIZE-AMERICA-UPDATED
Dakarian says:

March 21, 2013 at 5:42 pm

@JB

“Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alike are all unavoidable if we are serious about ever balancing the budget. Many people will never accept such cuts, and our trying to make those cuts will surely motivate them to vote and donate and rally (and maybe riot) against our proposals and our candidates.”

SS doesn’t need the kind of dramatic cuts that’s being proposed. All it needs is a few tweaks combined with congress no longer raiding the fund (or, if they can’t, just lumping it into a normal program like anything else). People tend to accept that. It’s just hard to hear them behind all of the major guttings.

Medicaid’s big issue is seniors feeding into it while getting Medicare. Perhaps instead of transforming it, just limit double dipping.

Medicare is the biggy. The biggest issue I have with Ryan’s idea is that the delay point he’s putting is during the time when it needs the help. I’m also wondering if just tweaking it won’t bring the needed changes to handle the boomers. Has the numbers been looked into, really? The changes have the feel of a wife selling a husband’s golf clubs because ‘they needed the money’ when, really, she just wanted him to stop playing golf.

But there are some Americans who might be more open to cutting non-military spending if we did the fair, realistic thing and also made major cuts to military spending at the same time. In fact, if the parties cannot get their act together and abolish some specific unconstitutional and/or ineffective federal agencies/programs, then let’s have another sequester, and another, and another. Force all federal entities, including the armed forces and all welfare-state agencies, to cut several percent of their budgets every year for a long series of years.

The public seems to be apathetic of the Sequester since it was an ‘everyone suffers’. I know I hated it, but was more willing to swallow it than the “cut everything else but 2 trillion more to defense” nonsense. I’d rather, instead of automatic mindless cuts have a good sit down and decide what we can cut, but oh well.

btw, “abolish some specific unconstitutional and/or ineffective federal agencies/programs,” I’m guessing the goal is to cut and cut and cut until they disappear entirely. If you don’t want the husband to go golfing then don’t claim it’s for budget purposes. Cash wise, those programs existed long before we had budget issues and they can keep existing in a balanced budget. It’s just shady to pretend the ‘only way’ to fix the issue is through YOUR plan (that happens to achieve many other goals you want).

I’m not saying to NOT seek those goals. Just tell it strait: You don’t like how I spend all day golfing.
Bob Jones says:

March 21, 2013 at 6:03 pm

@William,

I do not know how much of an alternative. Paul’s budget does very little to address the real problems of federal overspending. He leave DOD practically untouched – i.e. doesn’t go after the Federal jobs program aspect of it at all. He doesn’t eliminate DHS, which it should, he does almost nothing on entitlements, and seems to take the position that if we just go back to 2008 and pretend Obama wasn’t President then everything will be just fine.

It is all well and good to want to get ride of some of the more useless departments, like Commerce Energy and Education, but he doesn’t really make a serious attempt to go after the real Hogs in the budget. I guess this is how he plans to run for President. Let’s punish poor people, but continue the hand outs to the older voters, and the lobbyist who he needs to pay for his campaign.
Sam says:

March 21, 2013 at 6:49 pm

This doesn’t mean much. It just confirms what we already know about the ‘Liberty Movement’. They’re a bunch of economic illiterates and utopian nutjobs.
William Dalton says:

March 21, 2013 at 10:36 pm

@Bob Jones

I’m with you, man. It doesn’t sound like his “father’s Oldsmobile”, does it? I guess you’re right – such is the only way to get elected, or at least the Republican nomination. Electing Rand Paul will be gamble, but I can only figure not electing him is a near cert of continuing on the road to disaster.
Noah172 says:

March 22, 2013 at 12:14 am

We are not getting out of our fiscal mess without pain — for everyone, not just this or that disfavored group. Let’s balance the budget ASAP with no spending cuts but a massive, across-the-board tax increase. Let everyone who benefits from government services — which is everyone — feel the true burden of what our current government costs, as opposed to the opiate of government by credit card, which has been the rule since the 60s. Then, and only then, can we as a nation unite to have an informed debate about what our priorities really are. How much are we really, not hypothetically, not emotionally, not when talking to an opinion pollster, willing to spend on old folks’ doctor bills, shiny weapons to fight grinding wars in distant lands, and … well the rest of it becomes almost trivial compared with those first two.

As to the narrow topic of this post, Ryan is a joke. He is no real deficit hawk, as his voting record demonstrates amply. Even the blowhard John McCain, another phony on fiscal matters, has a better fiscal record than Ryan (nay on the 2003 Bush tax cut and Medicare Part D, versus Ryan’s ayes).
cecelia says:

March 22, 2013 at 1:30 am

We have the next to lowest tax rates of all the OCED countries – only Australia is lower. But rather than do the sensible thing like raise taxes – we should savage those programs which provide for the aged and poor? While keeping the military budgets untouched?

The Ryan budget is a farce – and does not really address deficit issues tghe greatest of which is actual health care costs. Address the issues behind our insanely high health care costs – avidly protected by the biggest lobby in Washington – and you do not have to gut medicare, medicaid. Our health care costs are out of control and very nuch higher than any other develioped country. Deal with the real issue. Govern.
cfountain72 says:

March 22, 2013 at 8:53 am

@Sam

“This doesn’t mean much. It just confirms what we already know about the ‘Liberty Movement’. They’re a bunch of economic illiterates and utopian nutjobs.”

Well, let’s see. NOT listening to them has brought us to the point of 2…3?…4? costly and unnecessary wars, a collapse of the housing bubble, tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities, as well as costing the US government its previously pristine AAA S&P bond rating. Even Greenspan admits that, while the gov’t can pay as many dollars as ‘needed’ to SS recipients, they can’t guarantee the value of those same dollars.

So, who are the nutjobs again?

Peace be with you.