This
article epitomizes to me what is wrong with liberal thinking. Alan Blinder attempts to deconstruct the Paul Ryan budget. Lets take a look at a few things that I believe are severely misguided.
- He says the plan will "eviscerate Medicare by privatizing it". That is a lot of demagoguing with no substantive proof. In fact, I'd argue the evidence says just the opposite. Show me one government run business that operates more efficiently (i.e. cheaply) than in the private sector. In the same paragraph he claims the House Republicans will "repeal every cost-containment measure enacted in last year's health reform legislation." That's right, the same bill known as ObamaCare which only appears to save money because they programmed in 10 years of revenues against 6 years of payouts.
- He incorrectly asserts that private insurance will continue to rise at a pace faster than the vouchers can cover. Again, this is a philosophical arguement here, but I'd argue that when the government gets out of the way the price of healthcare will stabilize.
- His argument against block grants for Medicaid is that it will be left to the individual states. He point is that Paul Ryan's Wisconsin might be able to do it, but it would never work in his home state of New Jersey. That is a serious indictment of the liberals in NJ, not the budget plan.
- He claims Obama's budget plan achieves similar deficit reduction. That is laughable on two counts. First, it does not come close to the Ryan plan. And two, Obama came out with a budget back in February. After Paul Ryan released his budget plan making significant budget cuts, Obama was forced to release his second attempt at a budget.
- And best of all, the last half of the article he argues that Ryan's plan of shrinking the government is bad at its very core. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP would fall from 23.75% of GDP now to a more reasonable 8.6%... and that's bad why?
