What Would Reagan Say About Paul Ryan?

This will be short because mostly I encourage you to read the article that I think answers my thread title in as much as we can ever guess about what Reagan would say. David Stockman is the financial side architect of the Reagan Revolution. He was Reagan's OMB director, the man principally responsible for approving Reagan's budget and economic policies. He worked very closely with President Reagan and arguably is the best positioned human being alive to render an opinion on how Reagan would have thought about Ryan (and thus Romney's) budget plan.

Before I offer a few quotes from the NYT piece today, let me tell you a bit about Stockman for those of you too young to know who he is or his stature in budget-crafting circles. First, read this article to educate yourself that Stockman is no fan of Obama so we can get this likely knee-jerk criticism from the Right side of ATS membership out of the way. In total, it is a very interesting and short (and an assessment I agree with), so try to read it if you are going to be active in the thread please:

Trashing Obama's Economic Team Jul 11, 2010 6:42 PM EDT
Reagan White House budget guru David Stockman talks to Lloyd Grove about the dangers of ignoring the deficit, why Bernanke, Geithner and Summers must be fired ASAP—and his support for Ron Paul....

So obviously, he is not an Obama fan, now onto what made him famous:

Stockman became one of the most controversial OMB directors ever during a tenure that lasted until his resignation during August 1985. Committed to the doctrine of supply-side economics, he assisted the approval of the "Reagan Budget" (the Gramm-Latta Budget), which Stockman hoped to be a serious curtailment of the "welfare state", gaining a reputation as a tough negotiator with House Speaker Tip O'Neill's Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and Majority Leader Howard Baker's Republican-controlled Senate. During this period, although only in his early 30s, Stockman became well known to the public during the contentious political wrangling concerning the role of the federal government in American society.

Stocktman is the real deal in terms of a fiscal conservative and true deficit hawk. In fact, he ultimately resigned his post because he believed Reagan's massive deficit spending made a mockery of his deficit hawk principles. That's bold and living up to your principles.

So what does he say about Ryan? These are HIS words, as he is the author of the editorial:

PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon. Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

Ouch. The godfather of American deficit hawks is not mincing any words here! Let's read some more:

Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade. A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut.

Well, the man is famous for speaking truth as he sees it, but this is brutal.

The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station. In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.

I might not agree with Stockman's policies in total, but I don't dispute his commitment or his chops. But before all you Right wingers get the tingle down your leg about Ryan as a fiscal pro and deficit hawk and an heir to the Reagan legacy, I suggest you consider what Reagan's own budget hatchet man has to say.

David Stockton editorial

Another ANTI-RYAN thread. How many did you post today?

Originally posted by RELDDIR
Another ANTI-RYAN thread. How many did you post today?

Guilty as charged. I am a bit fixated on politics at the moment and I don't like hypocrites. I'll concede he is a good man personally, but he has not earned the accolades the media is giving him. He voted lock-step with other Republicans (and many Democrats) to explode the debt in the Bush years and to turn us into a police state.

I'd be more interested in what Art Laffer has to say.

He'd say, "Reagan smash, Reagan smash!"

Originally posted by RELDDIR
Another ANTI-RYAN thread. How many did you post today?

Pajoly does seem to be curiously fired up and committed to the subject no?

If the USA ends up with Romney and this Ryan guy, you guys are screwed, sad fact is though that this will probably happen.

reply to post by pajoly


Not much I would think...Reagan's dead....unless, you plan on digging him up, reanimating him, and asking him yourself.

Des

reply to post by 11235813213455


But would you believe I have one thing in common with his life? We both really dig P90X.