Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 7:27:47 PM
Is the Term “Serious Democrat” an Oxymoron?
Was Tuesday, March 5, 2011, a special day that will lead us to prosperity or was it a dark day foreshadowing the “crack of doom?” Yesterday, Congressman Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, unveiled his FY 2012 Budget Resolution announcing that it is a path to prosperity, an effort to scale back the orgy of spending in Washington, tackling long avoided issues including comprehensive tax and health care entitlement reforms. Democrats, including Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new DNC Chair, responded rapidly to the Ryan budget, describing a Dickensian landscape littered with seniors starving to death and dying without medical care.
After hearing the Democrat caterwauling throughout the day, we should forgive anyone who is surprised to learn that the Ryan FY 2012 Budget is not the equivalent of Sherman marching through Georgia, but rather a modest proposal to slow the hemorrhaging of money, slowing the rate of spending without dealing with Social Security or other key issues still to be addressed. Yes, Democrats railed royally against the Ryan proposal, even though the Ryan budget “[i]n nominal terms” according to Veronique de Rugy projects “spending increases from $3.6 trillion in 2011 to $4.7 trillion in 2021. That equates to a $1.1 trillion increase over ten years.” And compared to other options, “[t]his is an improvement” she notes “over the Deficit Commission’s proposal that increased spending by $1.6 trillion over ten years and a big improvement over the president’s budget which increases spending by $1.9 trillion over the same period.” So, over ten years Mr. Obama’s spending increases are slashed, punitively reduced, drastically cut, all the way from $1.9 to $1.1 trillion. “Maybe more importantly,” de Rugy concludes “it would reduce the debt held by the public down to 67.5 percent of GDP as opposed to the projected 90 percent.”A skeptic might look at those numbers and conclude that in both cases the country is bleeding to death, the difference is that Dr. Obama just wants to bleed us faster.
If the Ryan Budget is a first step, then real austerity will be needed in future years to tackle a $14.5 trillion deficit, a deficit that is on its way to $20 trillion plus. Democrats “chicken little” response to the Ryan budget raises the question: Is there such a thing in Washington, D.C. as a “serious Democrat” anymore, or have they become incapable of governing, merely a punch line when combined with the word serious— nothing more than half of an oxymoron.