After the lopsided Senate vote, 57-40, against his “Path to Prosperity” bud get bill last week, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin must be feeling like Paul Revere riding through Washington shouting “bankruptcy is coming” — except that nobody is paying attention.
Certainly not the Senate Democrats — who are in their second year of defaulting on their constitutional obligation to produce a budget.
Certainly not President Obama, whose laughable February budget proposal (which did nothing about Uncle Sam’s hemorrhaging finances) lost 0-97 in another equally symbolic Senate vote last week. Democrats say it’s been superseded by more recent proposals.
Meanwhile, long-suffering Americans living in the real world between Wall Street and Hollywood are crying: “When are the jobs coming back?”
Answer: Not until the government stops spending $1.5 trillion a year in money it doesn’t have and shows that it’s not going to “fix” the problem by sucking the life out of the private sector.
Last week, in a Bloomberg blog post that quickly went viral, Stephen Carter recounted a conversation with an executive who explained that, despite an improving business climate, he’s not about to add employees. “How can I hire new workers today,” he said, “when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”
Bingo. Battered by the soaring costs of regulation, and all too aware that Democrats would rather raise taxes than reform entitlements, private-sector businessmen are sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see which way the electorate tips next year.
The solution — as both Republicans and Democrats know — begins with fixing the budget-busting entitlement known as Medicare.
Ryan’s proposal would transform Medicare — which along with Medicaid now consumes nearly a quarter of the federal budget — from a socialized program under which the feds directly pay medical bills for the elderly into a market-based plan of vouchers that would go toward the purchase of private insurance.
But the Democrats — wedded to their outmoded “Great Society” fantasy — can’t have that.
That’s why they pounded the issue in last week’s NY-26 special congressional election, won by the Democrat in what had been a safe Republican district. Now they’re crowing that Medicare reform will be the albatross around the GOP’s neck come fall 2012.
Never mind that Ryan’s Medicare reform wouldn’t affect anybody who’s now over 55. To keep their hold on power, the Democrats need to panic retirees.
In fact, the outlines of their 2012 campaign are already clear: Everything in Entitlementland is hunky-dory, and Republicans want to throw Grandma from the gravy train.
Don’t believe a word of it. Medicare as we know it is doomed. The ObamaCare law already slashed at least $500 billion from its future outlays. The status quo is not an option.
The system’s own trustees project that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will crash in 2024, right about
when the last Baby Boomers are entering the program. That’s five years earlier than last year’s projection.
Republicans need to turn the tables on the Democrats and make them pay at the ballot box for their fiscal malfeasance.
Every time the Democrats indulge in their emotional “MediScare” tactics — warning that the elderly (who are among the most well-off in society) will be forced to choose between dog food and health care — the Republicans need to come right back at them with the facts: Until entitlements are reformed and the regulatory state is reined in, we’re all in trouble.
For not only is Medicare doomed, but so is Social Security in its current form. Its trust fund will be exhausted in 2036, and its own trustees now warn that there’s little chance the trust fund will even exist beyond 2048.
So the mostly spineless Republicans — including House Speaker John Boehner, whose support for Ryan has been tepid at best — need to get with the program of truth-telling. Starting now, they must level with the American people about the parlous state of our finances and embrace — not flee from — the mantle of reform.
Paul Revere could use a little help this time.