Paul Ryan's Budget: It's Now Official-the GOP Learned Nothing in 2012

     The proof is in the pudding as they say and this pudding is pretty bad. Ryan seems to think the loss of his ticket means that Americans love his Medicare plan. If there is any reason for hope it's that this-could be-the end of Ryan's place as a VERY SERIOUS PERSON on the budget. It's premature to declare it official but the media coverage does offer us some green shoots. Here Krugman says of the Ryan budget:

    "Luckily it isn’t going to happen. And a quick read of reactions suggests that the new Ryan plan is being greeted with derision rather than adulation. Is our pundits learning? A bit, maybe."

     http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/night-of-the-living-alesina/?gwh=AB88B6C416FD60BB09066FC0FC31B2F7

     Incidentally, more than half of the 10 year balanced budget comes from ending-not ending ObamaCare; not ending as well as he does keep the Medicare cuts and new taxes. 

     "This is a fascinating factoid ferreted out of Ryan’s budget by the Post editorial board. After noting that the budget relies on a fantasy tax cutting vision and disproportionately slashing programs for low income beneficiaries, the editorial notes:

This brings us to the ideas that are too unrealistic to worry about: chiefly, Mr. Ryan’s proposal to save $1.8 trillion by repealing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and insurance exchanges. Combined with $700 billion in anticipated net interest savings, the Obamacare repeal accounts for more than half of the deficit reduction in Mr. Ryan’s budget — which pretty much closes the book on it as a serious guide to future policy.

      "Ryan’s apparent need to continue providing care and feeding to the GOP base’s unshakable Obamacare repeal fantasy doesn’t bode well for that GOP “makeover.”

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/13/the-morning-plum-no-the-gop-isnt-winning-the-argument-over-sequester/

     "Glenn Kessler cuts through Paul Ryan’s fibbing about how he’s supposedly balancing the budget with no tax increases, noting that Ryan is pocketing the tax hikes in Obamacare in order to do it. Of course, these are tax increases Republicans once described as “job killing,” but Ryan is keeping them — and the $716 billion in Medicare cuts in the law he campaigned against extensively last fall — while vowing to repeal the rest of the law. Very Serious!"

     It isn't just liberals who are knocking Ryan's budget: how about the conservative columnist at the NYTimes  Ross Douthat?

     "In effect, it sacrificed seriousness for “seriousness,” by promising to reach budgetary balance not over the long term (as budgets 1.0 and 2.0 did) but in a ten-year window. This is not going to happen, and more importantly there’s no reason why it needs to happen: Modest deficits are perfectly compatible with fiscal responsibility, and restructuring the biggest drivers of our long-term debt is a much more important conservative goal than holding revenues and outlays equal in the year 2023."

       http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2013/03/13/paul-ryans-baffling-budget/

      Well said: it's not a serious budget but a "Very Serious Budget." Et tu Forbes? Their piece linked above admits to finding Ryan's budget very puzzling.

       However, Douthat's critique is pretty incisive as he too understands as liberal wonks like Matt Ygelsias do that there's no reason to make a fetish of a balanced budget. 

      It's not just Douthat and Forbes either on the conservative side who don't get Ryan's budget. The Weekly Standard isn't too excited either:

     Justin Green warns that even if Douthat’s critique is dismissed as the ravings of a RINO, the pretty favorable climate Republicans can expect for the midterms could be changed — and not for the better — by pumping this message into the atmosphere: “Debt is a scary thing. We’ve spent the past six years dropping apocalyptic after apocalyptic warning. If we don’t change the total course of government now, we’re doomed. That requires cuts for everyone, even the aged.”

For Green, that tightens the laces on the Republicans’ “double bind,” as Matt Continetti puts it in The Weekly Standard. Continetti rather malevolently points out that the GOP is so inured to radically reforming its message and its platform because there just aren’t any big constituencies on the right in favor of doing so.

      Ryan's performance during the 2012 campaign did a lot to damage his image as a serious person on the budget. If this erodes this undeserved image considerably further that will be one benefit of this unfortunate document.