Paul Ryan in Wonderland: Chapter Six

Having wandered back into writing about U.S. politics for the past eighteen months or so, I sometime wonder how the full-time Washington correspondents, the lifers, do it: cover the same old junk year after year. The key to career longevity and job satisfaction, I suppose, is to buy into the notion, assiduously promoted by the politicians and their flaks, that what they are doing is serious. Budgets, national security, energy policy, health policy—these things matter. So get yourself a tape recorder, a Twitter account, and a piece of plastic from the Senate Press Gallery, and hop in a cab up to Capitol Hill. Write down what the elected representatives are saying, and try hard to keep a straight face.

Sorry folks. After watching Representative Paul Ryan launch his much-anticipated budget for the fiscal year 2014, I can’t keep up the pretense. The plan is a joke. It’s dead on arrival, and nobody should pay much attention to it, except as another exhibit in the indictment of latter-day Republicanism. Ryan’s numbers don’t add up. His proposals—cutting domestic programs, converting Medicare to a voucher program, returning Medicaid to the states, reducing the top rate of income tax to twenty-five per cent—were roundly rejected by the voters just five months ago. And the philosophy his plan is based upon—trickle-down economics combined with an unbridled hostility toward government programs designed to correct market failures—is tattered and shopworn.

...read more