Topic category:  Government/Politics

Unquiver your arrows all you GOP partisans and blind Republican loyalists! For I am here for you to take shots at. I am painting a big, red bulls-eye on myself for you to attack because I am here to tell you something you do not want to hear; the truth.

By now we are all well aware of Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget for 2012. We are also all aware of the talking points, especially the one where it would shave over six trillion dollars of federal spending over the next ten years. Those talking points led the American Spectator’s Peter Ferrara to call the Ryan proposal full of, “Real, Powerful Spending Cuts”[1]. But fortunately even Mr. Ferrara, sucked in by the hype, was at least drawn enough to the truth to mention it but only as an afterthought. He was too enthralled by Mr. Ryan’s proposal and praising it for anything deeper.

I will use Mr. Ferrera’s own words to tell you the unsettling truth about how inadequate the Ryan Proposal is.

"Ryan's budget reduces the federal deficit to below $1 trillion by next year, while President Obama proposes his fourth year of federal deficits over $1 trillion, at $1.2 trillion according to CBO. CBO projects that under Obama's proposed 2012 budget, the federal deficit is still $1.2 trillion by 2021. … Ryan's deficit by that year is $385 billion, after achieving what is called primary balance by 2015, meaning that the budget is balanced apart from interest on the national debt." – Peter Ferrera May 6th, 2011 The American Spectator

The Ryan budget is of course better than anything that President Obama can muster. He is a Marxist after all. Careless, rampant spending of everyone else's money is engrained in his DNA. Remember, the President originally proposed $3.7 trillion in spending for 2012, or nearly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion more than projected revenues. But while better, is the Ryan plan at all serious? How can it be when we are still just talking about a, "federal deficit to below $1 trillion by next year," and still being out of balance and running a deficit in 2015? Sorry, but interest on the debt still counts as spending against revenues. Debt is debt. Deficits are deficits.

A couple weeks ago I talked about these so-called “smart” meters [2] and how people add adjectives and other cute, descriptive terms to things to make them sound better than they really are. After all “smart” meters sounds really good and cool and hip. But if they are called what they actually are then how many people would be clamoring for “hey, government thinks you are using too much electricity so they are going to cut your power” meters? Yeah, like I said, “smart” sounds much better.

Here we see this same trick being used by people trying to pump Rep. Ryan’s budget plan. Being in “primary” balance is a fancy way of saying "still running a deficit and not really in" balance "by any stretch of the imagination". The word balance is associated with Ryan's plan and used to get people to support it because it is a positive thing to have our spending and revenues in balance. But the truth is that there is no balance. Again, as Mr. Ferrera points out, the Ryan Plan still is running a $385 billion debt in 2021 for crying out loud!

It does not take a rocket scientist to know what this means. Although it obviously takes someone a little smarter than a United States Representative or a blind partisan by the looks of things. Since I fall between those two extremes I completely understand it. Most likely you do too. It means we are still going to add trillions in debt over the next decade. If in 2021 we are still going to be $385 in the red, and presumably that is the best we are going to do over the next decade, multiply that by ten years and figure out how much more money we are going to saddle our children, born and unborn, with at a minimum.

This simple math is why the Ryan Plan should be a non-starter for anyone serious about dealing with our unsustainable debt and the problems it is shackling America with. But we have blind partisans out there who say that anything, even if it does not actually solve the problem, is better than what the Democrats are proposing.

The Republicans are doing the same thing I have warned you about for years. They are complaining that the Democrats are driving us over the cliff, have the pedal to the floor and are racing us to oblivion at one hundred miles per hour. But what about the Republicans? Well, they tell us bluntly if we put our trust in them they are not willing to stop the car. Oh no. They are only willing slow the car up to forty miles per hour.

But the cliff still looms before us.

To paraphrase Monty Python's The Life Of Brian, "Representative Ryan is not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"

[1] http://spectator.org/archives/2011/04/06/paul-ryans-adult-conversation [2] http://www.libertyreborn.com/2011/04/01/the-“smart”-meters-cometh/

J. J. Jackson

Biography - J. J. Jackson

J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com