According to liberal economist Paul Krugman the Ryan budget plan is “cruel nonsense.” I don’t know of any budget plan that someone who is adversely affected does not see as cruel (ask your wife to cut back on getting her nails done and see how cruel she becomes). I don’t know if the plan is nonsense or not, but I do know it is a plan and it’s out there for all to see and take shots at as Mr Krugman, the President and many others have repeatedly done.
What I find ironic is that even if the Ryan plan is nonsense, it does reflect the type of cuts and changes that will be necessary under any serious attempt to get our fiscal house in order. Whether it is the Presidents deficit reduction commission’s ideas, the so-called gang of six’s or anyone elses plan, serious and effective measures to reduce the deficit are going to squeeze a lot of people, especially if you define hurt as blowing up the status quo.
What is truly cruel is that we were brought down this path by politicians of both parties seeking to garner favor with one voting group or another, the elderly, students, investors, unions, women, minorities, take your pick.
Over many decades we were told money spent on this program or that would be well spent on attacking poverty, improving education, improving health care, the environment, agriculture, energy independence and all the rest. Today we are left with massive debt, a somewhat rocky future while critics of dealing with that debt say doing so is cruel because we need to spend money attacking poverty, improving education, improving health care, the environment, agriculture, energy independence and all the rest. Whaaa happen?
The cruelest action of all may be continuing to deceiving Americans about the eventual impact of not dealing with our debt. Of course, we always have the raise taxes scenario and that would work for a short time.
However, that reminds me of employers who a few years ago started attacking health care costs by dramatically raising employee contributions, and embracing high deductible plans. In other words cost shifting (increasing “taxes”) on the worker. While you are still reading this, I am going to look for the company that is satisfied with its current health benefit costs.
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