Arsonist fights fire
House Speaker Paul Ryan isn’t even trying to disguise his next big budget move, now that both houses of Congress have passed a tax bill that by way of slashing burdens on corporations and the wealthy would add $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit. All of a sudden, now that those at the top have claimed their riches and are destined to deplete the Treasury, tsk, tsk, deficits won’t do.
Having busted the budget many times over, Ryan and his fellow Republicans officially declare it time for fiscal discipline — to be borne, of course, by poor and old people who depend on the federal government as a lifeline, and by the working people of America who devote a chunk of every paycheck to funding Medicare and Social Security.
“We’re going to get back, next year, at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” said Ryan in an interview last week, stressing that the health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid must be cut down to size.
Say goodbye to “compassionate conservatism,” that quaint concept from back in the days of George W. Bush — hurled overboard in favor of callous conservatism, government shrinkage to be achieved by raw and dishonest force.
Say goodbye too, quite likely, to President Trump’s unorthodox-for-a-Republican promise, made over and over and over and over again to win the votes of seniors and others in the wary middle class, not to touch entitlement programs.
A serious review of federal entitlement programs to make them more efficient is welcome. Make the taxes that fund Social Security less regressive, perhaps. Make benefits more fair.
Ryan contemplates nothing of the sort. He has for his entire career strategized for their shrinkage as an offense to his ideological commitment to smaller government, and now schemes to seize the artificial opportunity his tax scheme created.
The same shrink-everything-in-the-wash gamesmanship now jeopardizes the lapsed Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers children whose parents make slightly too much money to qualify for Medicaid. The Republicans who control Congress are playing games with renewing the law, which expired 71 days ago. Some states are on the verge of running out of money.
That’s plain sick.