"Americans hoping to get real about our national debt just got sucker-punched by Republican Paul Ryan.
"Republicans want to spend $40 trillion over ten years. That averages a staggering $4 trillion per year. As recently as 2000, federal spending was only about $1.8 trillion.
"They also want to increase the federal debt from $15.0 trillion to $23.1 trillion. I hope our children and grandchildren enjoy paying interest on that extra $8.1 trillion.
"People should not judge the quality of this Republican plan by the standard President Obama has set. Everyone knows Obama is a big spender. Democrats rarely campaign on cutting government. What this budget shows is, Republicans are hypocrites. They have no intention of cutting the federal government down to size. In 2021, Paul Ryan still wants the feds to be spending 19.9% of GDP. That's a higher percentage than during Democrat Bill Clinton's second term. In 1997, federal spending was 19.5% of GDP, and it dropped to 18.2% by 2000. Paul Ryan is worse than Bill Clinton.
"Another unfortunate but predictable thing about Paul Ryan's budget is that it continues to mollycoddle the Pentagon. Paul Ryan is the Military-Industrial Complex's best friend. He apparently can't find one penny to cut from Obama's bloated levels of military spending. Only a big-government Republican could come up with language like 'reinvesting $100 billion in higher military priorities.'
"It's interesting that when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House from 2001-2006, they did nothing to shrink government, or even slow down government growth. On the contrary, back then, Paul Ryan was busy voting for expensive foreign wars, No Child Left Behind, and the huge 2003 Medicare expansion. More recently he's voted for the TARP bailouts and even ethanol subsidies.
"We Libertarians propose eliminating federal functions that are not authorized in the Constitution. Furthermore, Libertarians propose ending foreign wars and foreign troop deployments, allowing huge cuts in military spending. Libertarians would cut the federal government down to less than 10% of GDP, and we'd keep cutting once we got there."
For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.
The LP is America
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"Ya gotta start somewhere", and I say this as a card-carrying Libertarian.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans are NOT Libertarians, as they have so often proved, but they could help us reduce the size of government today, and right now, I don't really care if they are hypocrites.
SOMEONE has to get government spending under control, and this is a better direction than that coming from the Dems, who balk at a paltry $60 billion cut, demagoguing the issue as being draconian.
If not Paul Ryan's plan, whose? Come on Libertarians, you may be right, but you are also NOT IN POWER. This is a step in the right direction.
You have a point. This is a situation where a little bit of Machiavellian tactics would actually be a good thing (btw on a side note, Machiavelli has been historically misunderstood and misrepresented as a "bad guy" which was untrue). The LP could use Ryan as their tool to accomplish what needs to be done, and then restrategize and reshuffle who they want to do business with.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your readership ;)