There’s nothing wrong with President Obama speed-dating members of Congress.
Meeting face to face over food and wine, as Mr. Obama has recently done
with several groups of lawmakers from both parties, may ease the
demonizing politics of the last four years — along with the president’s
well-earned reputation for aloofness. And given how little some
Republicans know about his budget proposals — one senator confessed he had no idea what Mr. Obama wanted to cut before last week’s dinner — the shared meals were probably overdue.
But Mr. Obama should have no illusions about the core beliefs of some of
his Republican dining partners, or their willingness to accept change.
That was made clear on Tuesday when the House Budget Committee chairman,
Representative Paul Ryan, unveiled his 2014 spending plan:
a retread of ideas that voters soundly rejected, made even worse, if
possible, by sharper cuts to vital services and more dishonest tax
provisions.
The budget, which will surely fly through the House, was quickly praised as “serious” and job-creating
by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, though it is neither.
By cutting $4.6 trillion from spending over the next decade, it would
reverse the country’s nascent economic growth, kill millions of real and
potential jobs, and deprive those suffering the most of social
assistance.
All the tired ideas from 2011 and 2012 are back: eliminating Medicare’s
guarantee to retirees by turning it into a voucher plan; dispensing with
Medicaid and food stamps by turning them into block grants for states
to cut freely; repealing most of the reforms to health care and Wall
Street; shrinking beyond recognition the federal role in education, job
training, transportation and scientific and medical research. The public
opinion of these callous proposals was made clear in the fall election,
but Mr. Ryan is too ideologically fervid to have learned that lesson.
The 2014 budget is even worse than that of the previous two years
because it attempts to balance the budget in 10 years instead of the
previous 20 or more. That would take nondefense discretionary spending
down to nearly 2 percent of the economy, the lowest in modern history.
And in its laziest section, it sets a goal of slashing the top tax rate
for the rich to 25 percent from 39.6 percent, though naturally Mr. Ryan
doesn’t explain how this could happen without raising taxes on middle-
and lower-income people. (Sound familiar?)
There’s no need, of course, to balance the budget in 10 years or even
20; these dates are arbitrary, designed solely to impress the extreme
fiscal conservatives who now compose the core of the Republican Party.
That same core in the House will almost certainly reject the 2014
Democratic budget expected from the Senate on Wednesday. It will take a
far more evenhanded approach, cutting spending by $1 trillion while
eliminating tax breaks for the wealthy and spending $100 billion on job
training and infrastructure.
If the Ryan budget is any indication, Mr. Obama’s quest to bring reason
to an unreasonable party may be doomed from the outset.
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