‘Just because a budget proposal is made by the minority doesn’t mean [it’s] completely absent of acceptable ideas,” said Rob Nabors, President Obama’s deputy budget director. Nabors, speaking to reporters on a conference call yesterday, said that President Obama wants to hear from everyone, including the Republicans who had earlier presented their alternative budget proposal: “We’re going to try to work across the aisle. If they’ve got good ideas, we want to hear them.”
“Could you tell us what some of the good ideas are?” asked one reporter. Nabors could not name a single one.
This sort of double-talk is no surprise from an administration whose leader came to power, in part, by proclaiming his love of bipartisanship and openness to others’ ideas — then virtually never acting upon them. Nabors’s broader characterization of the House GOP budget, drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), is that “it isn’t a plan. It’s a series of talking points.”
That’s what Ryan gets for proposing to double the national debt in ten years, instead of tripling it as President Obama has proposed.
After last week’s premature and widely panned attempt to counter President Obama’s plan with a mere series of talking points, Republicans actually have some numbers in their budget this time around. Unsurprisingly, Democrats do not like them. The Republican budget “calls for some substantial cuts that are so huge that they strain credulity,” Rep. John Spratt (D., S.C.) said yesterday. Spratt’s budget, which will pass the House today, is almost identical to Obama’s except that it employs several gimmicks to make the numbers appear more palatable — special trust funds, a shorter time frame, and only a temporary fix of the AMT, the alternative minimum tax. (These are the tried-and-true, bipartisan tools of deception by which congressional budgeteers disguise expenses.)
Ryan’s spending plan does not balance the budget — not even close. But it comes much closer than Obama’s, and it does not contain the draconian spending cuts for which many conservatives might hope. Democrats quickly denounced it as unworkable, incredible, and unrealistic. In particular, Nabors cited its repeal of the out-year portions of the stimulus package — the $500 billion that comes in 2010 and beyond. Ryan says that this proposal is perfectly reasonable if the stimulus is to be thought of as a short-term measure to boost the economy. (His budget preserves the package’s increased unemployment benefits.)
Nabors also decried the Republicans’ plan to abolish President Obama’s “make work pay” tax rebate for low-income earners after 2009. “Tax rebates don’t work to grow the economy,” Ryan told NRO yesterday. He also pointed out that congressional Democrats, in their version of Obama’s budget, also kill the rebate after two years.
In addition to the $500 billion of stimulus savings, the Republicans cut $30 billion from this year’s discretionary spending. They freeze discretionary spending for five years — something almost unheard of, as Democrats point out. But Ryan said discretionary programs are funded amply: “Discretionary spending has gotten such huge increases in the last few years that we think the government is too fat and needs to go on a diet.”
On the tax side, the Republican budget would keep rates mostly where they are now, but cut corporate taxes to make the U.S. more competitive (an idea that already has some bipartisan support) and offer a simpler, alternative tax system with two rates and no deductions. (This guarantees, as one Republican congressman quipped, that members of Obama’s administration will not be too confused at tax time.) It does not include Obama’s tax on energy.
At a time when the Federal Reserve is engaging in the potentially inflationary activity of purchasing long-term Treasuries — effectively printing money for government use — Ryan’s budget contains $3.6 trillion less in borrowing than does Obama’s. Yet, once again, it still doubles the national debt in ten years. This is largely because it faces the same big problem that Obama’s budget faces: structural, mandatory spending on health care and retirement. “We’re going to have a bump in borrowing because of the boomers,” he said. “But our program keeps it under control — keeps our government limited and our taxes low.”
It is a lot easier for a minority than it is for a majority or a president to construct an idealistic budget: Ryan’s spending blueprint, regardless of what’s in it, has the political cover of being a guaranteed failure on the House floor today. Still, like the president’s budget, and unlike those of congressional Democrats, it is not riddled with gimmicks that hide costs — it is a ten-year budget that permanently fixes the AMT, for example.
And given the Democrats’ determination to ratchet up government spending to unsustainable levels over the next decade, nearly any counterproposal — even a doomed one — is worth presenting.
– David Freddoso is a National Review Online staff reporter and author of The Case Against Barack Obama.