Ian Murray at CEI wants more. While praising the Ryan blueprint as “the only serious proposal out there to get America’s finances back in order,” Murray offers a few notes:
[…] as Margaret Thatcher found in the UK during the 1980s, spending is only half the battle. The nature of the bureaucratic beast is that it will expand again. That’s why President Reagan’s simplification of the Tax Code wore off, and we now have a far more complex tax code than we did before tax reform.
We therefore need a similarly comprehensive reform of the federal government that will address what might be termed the “supply side” of the federal bureaucracy, to prevent it getting in the way of an entrepreneur-led recovery.
This reform should include:
* Abolition of whole government departments that have no valid constitutional purpose, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Labor
* The rechartering of valid existing agencies as performance-based agencies that exist to serve the public, not hinder them
* Reform of federal pay and working conditions
* A reduction in the use of federal contracts and grants, to tackle the “shadow” public sector
* Introduction of a single, fair tax system and a new Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights
* End labor unions’ privileges that put them above the law
* Privatization of appropriate government functionsand, above all,
* Genuine regulatory reform as proposed by Wayne Crews and Ryan Young.
I agree with Murray — both in lauding Ryan’s blueprint and in noting that it is but a starting point.
Fortunately, I think Ryan knows this as well — and he has offered a politically viable challenge that the American voter can get behind, that Democrats will have difficulty combating, and that, should fiscal sanity win out, will, as its structural reforms to spending take hold, create the conditions (and momentum) for the a much more direct attack on governmental excess and redundancy, and a groundswell of support for the kinds of federalist principles that obtain in, for instance, the move to block grant Medicaid money to the states.
Meantime, Rand Paul and Mike Lee can begin prepping for the really big shit that will finally get this country back on track and away from its horrific flirtation with European style social democracy / socialism and transnational progressivism, a flirtation that would, in the event of consummation, necessarily include a demand that the US manage its own decline down to a standard of “social justice” that requires it relinquish its super power status and join the community of the perpetually mediocre, burdened by high unemployment, a weak currency, and a bureaucratic-run cradle-to-grave nannystate where individual freedom has been traded for the sagging, swollen tit of state.
As we all know, the trouble began when the Federal government starting doing a bunch of stuff it was never supposed to do in the first place. Every encroachment resulting in more expenditure and moving the line of the new normal in the limits of government. They eased us to this point over the years, with the few big bi-partisan jumps of social security and then medicare sprinkled in between. Both sides have a share of the blame in that they both seem to like to create new government programs, they just differ on what the programs do (besides spend our money).
So, I agree, first we cut the budget back, and then we start eliminating programs. It would have worked the other way if they had the political will, but I think it will actually be easier to just say we have to spend less money (without targeting programs) and then cut the programs because they have to do so to meet the spending requirements.
Still, I’m cynical. This is our chance, but I still think the GOP establishment is too spineless to go through with it. I hope they prove me wrong.
I seem to be on the same page. From an email I wrote discussing Ryan’s plan yesterday.
Ryan’s plan is about spending and getting it on a path to sanity. This is something that will have to be changed over a period of time if it is to be done with a minimum of pain and disruption. There are other things that also are critical to deal with that don’t come directly under the purview of the Budget committee.
The way we tax is designed more for the benefit of the legislative class who can insert or remove favors to gain approval of their supporters and to use as a means of “nudging” people in the direction that someone in power thinks is the “right way to live”. This too must change.
The Regulatory State must also be dealt with and reigned in.
These other things will have as great or even a greater effect than the Ryan spending plan of getting the debt and deficit under control. Growing the economy by unleashing a more truly free market will be the greater part of the solution but first we must have agreement that the spending has to decrease or else it will be like the 80s-90s where the growth in tax revenue due to a growing economy was dwarfed by the growth in spending. Holding the line on spending while growing the economy so that tax revenue increases while rates decrease is what we have to do to get out of this mess which the ideas of the progressives have brought about.