Palin And The Ryan Roadmap

by John Hayward


Writing for the Wall Street Journal today, Sarah Palin unfurls the fiscal “road map” prepared by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and likes where it leads.

She didn’t much care for the recommendations of the President’s bipartisan deficit reduction panel, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, although she commends the authors for taking the problem seriously. “The report shows we're much closer to the budgetary breaking point than previously assumed,” Palin says. “The Medicare Trust Fund will be insolvent by 2017. As early as 2025, federal revenue will barely be enough to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on our national debt. With spending structurally outpacing revenue, something clearly needs to be done to avert national bankruptcy.”

I personally think 2017 and 2025 are generous assessments of the fiscal “doomsday” date, because those dates don’t properly account for the dynamic affects of a shrinking economy as fiscal collapse approaches. If we don’t get on a road map to fiscal sanity very soon, we’re going to arrive in 2017 on a roller coaster, picking up speed as it rattles down the tracks.

Palin judges the deficit commission’s report inadequate because it leaves three major financial tumors largely untreated: Social Security, ObamaCare, and our incredibly convoluted tax system. The commission would address Social Security by raising the retirement age, long after the point where the system would have become insolvent – and even at that, it would be making an already rotten deal for future retirees even worse. Ryan’s “Roadmap For America’s Future,” on the other hand, offers a program for younger workers to opt into a private retirement account, while preserving existing benefits for those 55 and older. There is, quite frankly, no other approach that will save the system.

“On health care,” Palin continues, the Roadmap “would replace ObamaCare with a new system in which people are given greater control over their own health-care spending. It achieves this partly through creating medical savings accounts and a new health-care tax credit - the only tax credit that would be left in a radically simplified new income tax system that people can opt into if they wish.” It also reforms Medicare for those under 55 into a “voucher with which people can purchase their own care.” The one thing we’ve never tried to do, in the course of “reforming” health care, is give individuals more control over it, coupled with more incentives for health care providers to win their business through competition.

On taxes, the Ryan plan would “replace our high and anticompetitive corporate income tax with a business consumption tax of just 8.5%. The overall tax burden would be limited to 19% of GDP (compared to 21% under the deficit commission's proposals).” From World War II to the 1970s, the government spent less than 20% of GDP. Our fiscal health went terminal when that limit was exceeded. There is a school of economic thought that suggests it’s essentially impossible for any government to indefinitely sustain spending beyond the 20% threshold, as the recessive effects of excessive taxation and spending cause the economy to begin deflating. I think we’ve gotten close enough to proving this theory to suspend the experiment.

Ryan’s plan also simplifies the tax system to two rates, 10% for single filers up to $50,000 or joint filers up to $100,000, and 25 percent for higher amounts, with a generous standard deduction. It eliminates double taxation on savings, investments, and estates, taxing only income. Aside from the health care credit, the rest of the complex maze of deductions, subsidies, and penalties that turn our current tax code into an instrument of social control are eliminated.

“Together these reforms help to secure our entitlement programs for the 21st century,” Palin concludes. “According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Roadmap would lead to lower deficits and a much lower federal debt. The CBO estimates that under current spending plans, our federal debt would rise to 87% of GDP by 2020, to 223% by 2040, and to 433% by 2060. Under Rep. Ryan's Roadmap, the CBO estimates that debt would rise much more slowly, peaking at 99% in 2040 and then dropping back to 77% by 2060.”

It’s important to see one of the most popular figures in the conservative movement throwing her weight behind a carefully thought-out set of proposals like Ryan’s. As Palin concedes, the Roadmap for America’s Future isn’t perfect, but it’s clearly not a bunch of cockamamie ideas Ryan tossed out in a beer-fueled rant after realizing he couldn’t handle Speaker Nancy Pelosi for one more instant. Ryan’s ideas are also consonant with a lot of interesting things Mike Pence has been saying lately.

The common liberal knock on the Tea Party movement in general, and Sarah Palin in particular, is that they have no ideas, only complaints and sound bites. Palin expresses her own concrete proposals on a regular basis, and now she’s signing on to the reinforced concrete of Paul Ryan’s comprehensive plan. As Americans watch the Democrats dissolve in a petulant meltdown over their own childish demands, economic fantasies, and utter irresponsibility, they would do well to learn that people like Palin, Ryan, and Pence are the adults in the room.

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John Hayward is a staff writer for HUMAN EVENTS, and author of the recently published Doctor Zero: Year One. Follow him on Twitter: Doc_0. Contact him by email at jhayward@eaglepub.com.

The Blue Bloodbath

by John Hayward

In a recent interview, former First Lady Barbara Bush said of potential presidential candidate Sarah Palin: “I sat next to her once, thought she was beautiful, and I think she’s very happy in Alaska… and I hope she stays there.”

This prompted Palin to respond, in a radio interview with conservative host Laura Ingraham, "I don't think the majority of Americans want to put up with the blue bloods. And I say it with all due respect - because I love the Bushes - but the blue bloods want to pick and chose their winners, instead of allowing competition to pick and choose the winners."

This prompted Meghan McCain, improbably employed as a professional writer by The Daily Beast, to declare she had never heard the term “blue bloods” before, so she had to Google it, and found herself boiling with rage by the time the page finished loading. Actually, the first hit returned by Google for the search phrase “blue bloods” is a link to watch the CBS cop drama of the same name, so maybe Meghan paused to enjoy Tom Selleck’s fine performance as a police chief (whose name, coincidentally, is “Reagan”) before she began seething. Here’s a sample of the fiery stew slopping over the edge of her literary pot:

“I actually had to Google what the meaning of ‘blue bloods’ was, although I could surmise that it was some kind of knock against education and coming from a family of some success. Yes, in essence that is what this statement meant. Families that work hard and achieve a long line of successful people are ‘blue bloods’ and thus, she implied the opinions of said people are jaded and elitist, even if that family lineage has a long history of public service and leadership within Republican Party.

[…] None of this is all together surprising except for the fact that historically it is the moderates - or people like yours truly - who get accused of starting party infighting and this statement from Sarah Palin showcases that on a very basic level the underlying cultural separation in this country is also happening within the Republican party itself.”

McCain seems to have lost track of who “started” this round of “party infighting,” but leaving that aside, this is not just a case of cultural separation. “Blue blood” is a term that resonates with a frustrated nation, weary of serving at the pleasure of an insular ruling class. The inheritance of power, through family or party machinery, is of far greater concern to middle-class Americans than the inheritance of wealth.

Meghan McCain makes a show of willfully misinterpreting “blue bloods” as a slam at educated people from successful families. It is actually a derogatory term for unearned privilege. The phrase does not conjure images of a new generation skillfully managing inherited wealth and running productive family corporations. The defining characteristic of the blue blood is their immunity from consequence. They don’t live in the same world as the rest of us. They are not crushed in the gears of a system they control from above.

For example, a group of super-wealthy liberals recently made news by openly begging for the government to raise their taxes. They spoke in support of a system that drains only a few drops of blood from their ample financial arteries, while plunging needles directly into the hearts of the middle class. Tax increases, short of outright confiscation, will not destroy an opulent lifestyle, especially for those who can afford the finest accountants and lawyers… but they’re murder on the humble lives of all the people those billionaires could hire, if they kept their money and invested it, rather than handing it over to the government. Soaring tax rates won’t make the rich live in poverty, but they will prevent the middle class from becoming rich.

The Bushes were painted as blue bloods long ago, when the Clinton campaign hammered George Bush with a phony story that he’d never seen bar code scanners in grocery checkout lines before. It wasn’t true, but voters recoiled from the perception that Bush was disconnected from their hardships in a down economy. If there had been absolutely no substance to the caricature, Bush would have overcome it easily.

What Barbara Bush said about Sarah Palin is equally out of touch. Palin’s Facebook page is brimming with substantial essays, including a letter to freshman Republicans packed with policy ideas, and serious criticism of the monetary policy known as “quantitative easing.” Treating her like a pretty little bumpkin that should stay put in the hinterlands feeds a Democrat narrative that will suppress her ideas, by ensuring the public doesn’t take her seriously enough to listen to them. Mrs. Bush is under no obligation to support her, but she isn’t doing the Tea Party-infused Republican base any favors with her sneering dismissal.

The larger point about aristocracies forming like barnacles around family fortunes, lifetime congressional seats, and ancient bureaucracies is important. We all labor under the dead hand of the past, forced to pay for commitments made before we were born. The way things are going, it will be even worse for our children. The modern Democrat Party is one huge, useless royal family, gaping in helpless amazement as the “family business” they inherited comes crashing down around them. The last thing the Republicans should do to compete in 2012 is trot out the latest tired old scion from their own political dynasties. It isn’t money, a venerable family name, or time spent in exclusive schools that make a “blue blood.” The key ingredients are arrogance and inertia.

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John Hayward is a staff writer for HUMAN EVENTS, and author of the recently published Doctor Zero: Year One. Follow him on Twitter: Doc_0. Contact him by email at jhayward@eaglepub.com.

Why Palin Quit

Death by a Thousand Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests

People close to Sarah Palin say national political reporters and pundits have missed the real reasons for her surprising decision to resign as Alaska governor. The national media have dismissed or downplayed her real motives, which had little to do with any plans to run for president in 2012.

Sarah Palin

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. "Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me. "She was fully aware she would be branded a 'quitter.' She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself."

This situation developed because Alaska's transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature. Most have centered on Ms. Palin's use of government resources, and to date have turned up little save for a few state trips that she agreed to reimburse the state for because her children had accompanied her. In the process, though, she accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the bill would grow ever larger in the future.

"The Alaska ethics elves had painted such a target on Sarah's forehead that she had begun turning down pretty much every invitation she got -- even though they were pouring in every day by the dozens," a confidant of the governor's told me. "It is not throwing in the towel. It is deciding that she was ineffective in fighting for her principles and could do more in another role."

Family considerations also played a role. Ms. Palin gave birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome in 2008, and also has a six-year old. Everyone in the family was weary of endless personal attacks, including mean-spirited suggestions on liberal blogs that all of her children should have been aborted and that she would run on a presidential platform promoting retardation.