Are we not Conservative enough? Are we willing to accept too little from the GOP?
Here's my take on Paul Ryan's budget: Paul Ryan - The Only One With a Plan
Here's what J.J. Jackson has to say about it. . .
Paul Ryan Isn’t The Savior We Need
By J.J. Jackson
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/
and here's his follow-up:
I got them again. Yes the so-called, self-professed conservatives, who are really just a conglomerate of pseudo-conservative moderates who do not want to be called the liberals that they are, sure as shooting did not like my article last week. In that article I knocked Representative Paul Ryan[1] off the perch upon which they had tried to place him. Like a mundane and repetitive soap opera, the moderates predictably howled and moan that I dared to dissect his plan and tell the truth about it. I think I will call this new daytime drama, As The Pseudo-Conservatives Wail.
Yes, I invited the GOP partisans who, like their Democrat counterparts, cannot form a thought on their own, and can only regurgitate vacuous non-arguments when they don’t like the truth, to attack me. And attack me they did. But why? Simply because I pointed out how Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal still adds trillions in debt over the next decade on top of the fourteen plus trillion dollars we already are in the hole. Shhh, that's supposed to be a secret, so don't tell anyone.
The summary of all the arguments, made by Republican partisans, against my article were as follows:
1) “Well smart guy, what’s YOUR plan?”
2) “It’s better than what Democrats plan!”
3) “At least Mr. Ryan is trying to do something!”
4) “You obviously are not a conservative! Because you’re helping Obama!”
Liberals, of course, attacked me for attacking the Democrats and President Obama in the article. But that was to be expected as well.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that no, so-called, conservative who levied their cannons at me disputed any of the facts of the article. Nope, they accepted the fact that trillions would be added to the debt with Paul Ryan’s proposal. So what their complaints basically came down to was that I was trying to have a real “adult conversation” on the issue. You know, the conversation that people like Mr. Ryan and all these folks who support him claim to want? But when that “adult conversation” means telling the truth, which is that Ryan’s plan does not solve the major problem facing America, it immediately turns into the same juvenile conversation we have been having for years. And self-professed conservatives show their liberal, progressive stripes telling me how we cannot cut out the unconstitutional spending fully, how people would be hurt if we did what really needed to be done, yadda yadda yadda.
Let’s look at each of these arguments.
Yeah, Well What’s YOUR Plan?
When it comes to all the vacuous arguments, this one was by far the most common complaint levied against me. I wrote an article. I discussed a particular issue. That issue was how Paul Ryan’s budget proposal was not serious. I showed why it was not serious. That was, simply, the context of this article.
I could have added pages and pages of discussion about what needed to be done to have a meaningful reduction in our federal deficit. But then it would not have been an article. It would have been a pamphlet; something I have released several of discussing serious issues like true meaning of the General Welfare Clause [2] and also the reasoning behind why liberty is superior to tyranny as well as the potential outcome if America does not turn away from tyranny [3].
Those were pages and pages long. But why should I do that with regards to this issue when I have talked about what needs done already? Just one example was my series of articles entitled Five Unthinkable Options [4]. In five consecutive articles I already used real world numbers, discussed logical reasons as to why certain things must be done, and the consequences of not doing them.
These articles are not hard to find. Several of them are among the top ten articles viewed on my personal website, Liberty Reborn. Links to them are displayed on every page of under the header in the sidebar “HOT! HOT! HOT!” In fact, if you Google “Five Unthinkable Options” nearly all the top results (as of Wednesday April 20th, 2011) are to parts of that series on sites like Canada Free Press, Liberty Reborn (again, my site) and others. Portions of my series even ranks higher in Google for that term than the Wikiquote page for The Simpson’s Movie. That movie was what I based the premise of the article on and from the quote by the character Russ Cargill in that very popular piece of cinema.
So do not try that, “so what’s your plan?” line with me or my readers. It does not fly and you only look ignorant when you use it.
It’s Better Than Obama’s Plan!
Lot of people tried this line of attack on my article to. When posted in comments sections on sites who published my work it was usually followed or proceeded by some other frivolous comment urging others to therefore reject my rejection of the Ryan Plan because, “we have to do something!”
But I addressed this in my article. I admitted it was better than Obama’s even more asinine plan. “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,” I said. But I also pointed out the reality of Ryan’s plan in my closing arguments. “[Republicans] tell us bluntly if we put our trust in them they are not willing to stop the car. Oh no. They are only willing to slow the car up to forty miles per hour. But the cliff still looms before us.”
A car wreck is still a car wreck. And when we are talking about driving off a cliff, as we are here, whether it is the Ryan Plan or the Obama Plan, no one is going to walk away from this one.
How Can You Attack Mr. Ryan For Trying To Do Something?
Ah, yes, the old canard of sure, what is being done is dumb but at least we are doing something! Do you people making this argument realize how stupid you sound? Or is the light you believe to be emanating from around Paul Ryan blinding you so badly that this sort of drive actually sounds like a good argument?
This is the argument liberals always make. They made it for TARP, the auto bailout, the mortgage/bank bailout and on and on and on. At least, they said, they were “doing something.” It did not matter that what they were doing was dumb beyond all belief however. It did not matter that they were adding to the already unsustainable deficit, mortgaging our children’s future and spending money we did not have. Oh no.
They were “doing something.”
Please.
You know, lots of people do lots of things every day. It does not however make what they do good.
You Cad! You’re A Liberal In Disguise!
Oh yes, I have heard this so many times over the past week. But it still makes me laugh raucously every time this comment pops into my email inbox. Indeed, so this theory goes, I, despite years and years of a track record of unequivocally right leaning, Constitution supporting, limited government loving commentary published on conservative and libertarian websites the world over, am really a liberal plant Hell bent on getting President Obama re-elected by secretly, “waging an unabashedly dishonest smear campaign against Paul Ryan and the Republican Party.” Yes, that is an actual quote from one deranged reader.
Forget all the times I have hacked apart President Obama’s sick, liberal agenda. Forget all the times I that shredded former (thank God) Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Forget my relentless assault on all things liberal consistently week after week. Forget me supporting and voting for Alan Keyes in the last election cycle for President. No, forget all this. Now I am a “liberal plant”. I could provide footnotes and links to all these things, but I would just suggest that, if you doubt this to be true, to visit Liberty Reborn and peruse the site for an hour or two.
This sort of complaint is not new however. During the last presidential election cycle, when I leveled by cannons at Senator John McCain, in my famous, pre Tea Party piece called This Is My Hill [5], I got the same objection. No one ever disagreed with me that McCain’s liberal tendencies I pointed out were indeed liberal tendencies though. Nope. It was just GOP partisans attacking me for hurting McCain’s chances at hoodwinking conservatives into thinking that old John was one of them.
I also got this same complaint when I attacked former President George W. Bush for his grand stupidity known as the Toxic Assets Relief Program which was nothing but an unconstitutional act of grandiose stupidity by a man who leaned left more than any Republican hack would care to admit. And I also got it when I dared to say that Sarah Palin would be nothing more than a stop gap if elected [6].
Here is how this statement actually translates from gobbledygook to English. What people who say this really mean is, “You’re right. I cannot debate you on the facts. I’m not really a conservative though even though I proclaim to be one. I love the GOP blindly like liberals love the Democratic Party without question.”
Yep. It’s been a fun week. I love my job. Especially when I expose all you pseudo-conservative moderates as the liberal leaning fools you are who think that deficit spending is ok as long as Republicans are proposing it.
It’s been a week now. Got any new, frivolous complaints about me or my article that you want to level at me?
[1] Rep. Paul Ryan Isn’t The Savior We Need
[2] Here Hangs Lady Liberty
[3] A Call For Reason
[4] Five Unthinkable Options: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part5
[5] This Is My Hill
[6] The Stop Gap Conservative
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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 The Right Things. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at Liberty Reborn.
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