Louvor e genética do
sistema político americano
sistema político americano
Paul Ryan forcefully attacked the Obama Administration tonight. But many of the
criticisms he leveled against Barack Obama apply equally to his and Mitt
Romney’s own records.
Ryan attacked Obama’s Patient Protection Affordable Care Act for being laden
with “mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country.” He
was talking about mandates such as the one Mitt Romney imposed in Massachusetts.
Ryan decried “$716 billion funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An
obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to
pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.” But the budget House
Republicans passed this year, which Paul Ryan wrote, keeps Barack
Obama’s Medicare cuts and adds another $205 billion on top.
It's true the Republican budget repeals PPACA, so it doesn’t use the Medicare
savings “to pay for a new entitlement.” But if Medicare cuts constitute the
abrogation of “an obligation we have to our parents and grandparents,”
presumably they’re not OK even if they aren’t used to pay for Medicaid
expansion.
Ryan criticized Obama for ignoring his own debt commission. “They came back
with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did
exactly nothing.” That urgent report? Technically, it wasn’t a report from the
debt commission. Too many of its members dissented from the report for it to be
adopted as the commission’s official report. One of those dissenters was Paul
Ryan.
The central attack in the speech is one that I agree with: The Obama
administration is out of ideas and adrift on economic policies. “They have run
out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they’ve got
left.” But the speech did not make the case that Romney and Ryan would succeed
where Obama has failed.
Ryan criticized the president for not addressing the housing crisis. But
neither Ryan nor Romney have said what they would do about the housing
crisis.
Ryan criticized the president for failing to foster small business and job
creation. But the speech contained no concrete ideas to this end other than “tax
fairness and regulatory reform,” which is terminally vague.
Ryan criticized the president for shying away from plans to fix the long-term
budget gap. But Romney and Ryan do not have a viable plan for making the budget
sustainable, and have made several irresponsible promises that will make it hard
for them to balance the budget.
Romney and Ryan have promised not to raise taxes, called for a 20 percent cut
in income tax rates, pledged to outspend the president by hundreds of billions
of dollars on Medicare (reversing Ryan’s former position to the president’s
right), and urged big increases in defense spending. How does that constitute
being more responsible than Obama on the federal budget?
Ryan is right that Barack Obama has been, in many ways, an underwhelming
leader. But he failed to make a case that he and Mitt Romney
would do any better.
