The View from Right Field

Paul Ryan’s Budget Plan – Such As It Is*

Last week Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, presented his proposed budget plan for fiscal year 2013, which starts October 1, 2012, and people in both parties are happy.  Republicans (or at least some of them) are happy because it gives them something to stand on, a program to get the budget under control and get/keep taxes down.

Lots of Democrats are happy too, perhaps even happier than some Republicans.  Of course, the Democrats aren’t happy because they think Representative Ryan’s plan is good one and they can to support it.  Rather, the Democrats like it because they think they will be able to use it against the Republicans in the fall (politics über alles, after all).**

I haven’t read enough about Representative Ryan’s plan to know all of the details.  I have a couple of concerns, and there are several things I really like.  First, the concerns.  I wish Representative Ryan, and other House Republicans, were not trying to set the cap for discretionary spending for fiscal year 2013 below the number that was agreed to last August.  The deal last August set a cap of $1.047 trillion for discretionary spending for fiscal year 2013.  Representative Ryan’s budget drops that number by $19 billion to $1.028 trillion.  Democrats call this a breach of faith, while the Republicans say the $1.047 trillion figure was a just maximum, not an agreed-upon number.  I’m not sure who is right, but I wonder if a fight over $19 billion, especially this way, is something we want to be doing in the middle of the presidential election this fall.

Also, I wish Representative Ryan could have been a little more specific on how he is going to get the necessary tax revenues to start cutting the deficit, especially with his proposed reductions in tax rates.  (The deficit is so big that cutting spending isn’t going to do the job by itself.  We need to increase tax collections, too.)  Representative Ryan said that that isn’t the job of the Budget Committee, and he is right.  Still it would be nice to see more specifics.  But then maybe identifying the necessary changes (i.e., the deductions we would have to get rid of, etc.) would just give Democrats political issues (remember, politics über alles) without accomplishing much of anything.

But there are good things in Representative Ryan’s budget.  First, even though there aren’t a lot of specifics, I like Representative Ryan’s idea of lowering rates and broadening the base for taxes.  That is the way we have to go.  It’s also what was suggested by President Obama’s own debt commission after the election in 2010.  As I said on Sunday, raising taxes rates on the rich, which is President Obama’s idea, isn’t going to work (because it won’t raise enough money), and it’s not a plan for the future.  Representative Ryan’s plan may be missing some detail, but he has the right idea, and his plan heads us in the right direction.

I also like Representative Ryan’s suggestions for Medicare.  The current system is not sustainable.  It can’t continue as it has.  There isn’t enough money.  President Obama’s plan is, apparently, to keep costs down by government rules and government experts.  While I won’t use the name, the Obama plan will have government experts and government committees telling us what treatments are okay and what drugs can be used (or at least paid for) based on their relative effectiveness (and their costs).  If your condition doesn’t respond to the “best” treatment (in the eyes of government experts), that will be unfortunate (for you), but at least costs will be controlled – in theory.

Most importantly, I like the fact that Representative Ryan is trying to restore the automatic cuts that are supposed to be made in defense spending cuts because the “supercommittee” failed to come up with a solution last fall.  I realize that Democrats will say that this, too, is breaking faith with the compromise reached last summer.  Maybe it is.  I don’t care.  As I have said before, we can afford the defense budget we need to protect ourselves and our interests.  Defense comes first.  The Constitution talks about “provid[ing] for the common defense,” not providing for solar subsidies or providing for federal aid to elementary education.  If the compromise made last summer doesn’t provide enough money for defense, then it needs to be changed.

Representative Ryan’s plan is not perfect.  But in the most important way, it is better than President Obama’s.  If you can’t all the way, at least go in the right direction.  Representative Ryan’s plan does that.  President Obama’s does not. 

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* I am using the same title I did on Sunday for my post on President Obama’s economic and budget plan.  Trying to be even-handed.

** The Democratic view of the politics of the budgeting process can be seen in this quote from an article in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago:

“Democrats say that if the House and Senate stick to that number [i.e., $1.047 trillion in discretionary spending – see the third paragraph of this post], Congress could devote much of its energy to working on a long-term deficit reduction plan that would be ready for a vote shortly after the November election.”

In other words, the Democrats aren’t interested in making any hard decisions or taking any positions that might be unpopular before the election.  If Paul Ryan wants to do that, they’ll take advantage of the situation to score political points.  But they’re not going to do it themselves.  It reminds you of what President Obama said to Russian President Medvedev yesterday: “After my election I have more flexibility.”

Obama to Medvedev: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."

I had been planning on posting a few comments on Representative Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which he presented last week, but that will have to wait because this exchange between President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in South Korea today comes first:

“President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir [Putin].”

In spite of White House spokespeople tried to spin (see here), I think the point is pretty clear.  President Obama is willing to give up on our missile defense systems against countries such as Iran and North Korea, the latter of which has announced it will be putting a satellite in orbit next month, i.e., testing an intercontinental ballistic missile.  Russia doesn’t like these missile defense systems.  The Russians claim the systems are directed against them.  They aren’t, but some variations of these systems have involved eastern European countries.  Russia doesn’t like that because Russia thinks they ought to be the dominate power in eastern Europe, and they don’t like the United States being there.

President Obama is apparently willing to give up our missile defense systems.  He just can’t do it before the election.  I guess he figures the American people would rather have a possible defense against rogue missiles.  So he is asking Dmitri to tell Vladimir that he needs some “space”.  But once the election is over, he will “have more flexibility”. 

In other words, it looks like we will have to re-elect President Obama to see what he will do in his second term – because he’s not going to tell us before the election.

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Update (3/27/12 8:15 am: Added quotation marks at the end of the quote in the title.

President Obama’s Economic and Budget Plan – Such As It Is

To the extent that President Obama has an economic plan, it is to spend more money and raise tax rates on the rich, which has basically been his preferred plan since he took office. (To the extent that I once wondered whether Barack Obama was “Very Liberal or Just a Moderate Democrat for Change,” I now know. He’s very liberal. And to the extent he hasn’t been very liberal, it has been because Congress wouldn’t go along or he was worried about getting re-elected.)

In any case, back to the President’s economic plan, especially the part about raising tax rates on the rich. There are two reasons to raise tax rates on the rich. One is to raise more tax revenue. The other is that it feels fairer to make the rich pay a higher tax rate even if the government doesn’t wind up collecting more money in taxes. I realize the latter seems a little bizarre, but in 2008 Barack Obama did say that “fairness” was a reason for raising the tax rate on capital gains even if the increase did not collect more tax revenue. (See the 18th paragraph of this post.)

But even the first reason, raising tax rates to raise tax revenue, won’t work in the range President Obama is talking about. In England the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is lowering the top rate on the income tax from 50% to 45%. Why? This excerpt from an article in this week’s Economist, entitled: “The 50% tax rate: Falling flat: Why the higher rate of income tax yielded so little,” explains:

“‘No Chancellor can justify a tax rate that damages our economy and raises next to nothing,’ said George Osborne as he announced the passing of the 50% higher rate of personal tax. His assertion that the tax reaped little revenue was founded on analysis by tax-office wonks, published alongside the budget. The study is based on a single year’s tax returns, but is nonetheless compelling.

It shows that the combined incomes of the taxpayers liable to pay the 50% rate (ie, those with earnings above £150,000, or $238,000) fell by a quarter, from £116 billion to £87 billion, in 2010-11, the first year in which the tax applied. This sharp drop means either that the well-paid did a lot less work in Britain or that they shielded their income from the higher tax rate. A closer look suggests the latter. The tax wonks find that up to £18 billion of income was brought forward to the previous tax year to avoid the top rate. …

The Treasury’s estimate of a £100m revenue loss from cutting the top rate of tax to 45% is based in part on the analysis of 2009-10 tax receipts. The results suggest that the tax take from incomes over £150,000 is little different whether you set the tax rate at 45% or 50%. Setting the rate much higher than 45% is pointless; beyond 50% it is self-defeating.”

President Obama can raise tax rates as much as he wants (if he gets enough Democrats in Congress to vote for it), but he won’t get the tax revenue he expects because the people will rearrange things so as little as possible of their income is subject to the new, higher tax rate. I don’t know if he doesn’t understand this or can’t understand it (because it is so contrary to the liberal Democratic/progressive belief system), but if you raise tax rates, people will do their best to figure out how to avoid the higher taxes. It’s not just the rich (anybody can buy on Amazon to avoid sales taxes or buy their cigarettes in a neighboring state with lower tobacco taxes), but the rich have more at stake – and more money to pay accountants and tax lawyers to help them figure out how to do it.

So what is President Obama going to do if he is re-elected and the tax revenues from his increased tax rates on the rich don’t raise enough money for all the spending he wants to do? He can spend less, continue to borrow trillions, or raise taxes on the middle class. My guess is that he’ll start with number two. But he will only be able to do that as long as the world is willing to lend to us, at which point we will be forced to do both one and three. Because number two can’t go on forever. We just don’t know when it will end.

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* Before you say that either one of those rates is a lot higher than the top rate in the United States, consider that President Obama wants to raise the top income tax rate to 39.6%, as well as add other, extra taxes on the rich. Plus add in state income taxes, which are 10% or more in some states, and you’re right up there.

The Constitutionality of Obamacare

On Monday the Supreme Court will be taking up the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare plan, and they are going to do it with three days of arguments. The Court’s providing for three days of arguments shows the seriousness with which the Supreme Court will be giving the issue. And it looks good to the public: It is the Supreme Court telling the people that they understand the importance of the issue and they are proceeding appropriately. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but perhaps the best guess I have seen is a 6-3 or 7-2 vote to uphold the law, with Chief Justice Roberts writing the opinion himself in order to keep the opinion as narrow as possible, so it only applies to healthcare and does not become the basis for further expansions of federal power.

As for my thoughts, I have written on the subject twice before. The first time was on April 8, 2010, when the idea that there could be a real constitutional challenge to the idea was not taken seriously. I wrote again ten months later, on February 7, 2011, by which time it had become clear that there was a real, substantive challenge to the law and that it might not get upheld. Looking back on those two articles, I don’t think I have much more to say on the constitutionality of the law. At this point all we can do is wait for the lawyers to argue and the Court to decide.

Fantasy Baseball - The Real Kind

“Fantasy baseball” is a big deal.  Personally, though, I have always thought that the real fantasy baseball was baseball itself.  How could fans care so much if it were not for fantasy – expect maybe Yankees fans, but they don’t count.

In any case, with baseball season starting two weeks from today, I give you this cartoon on Fantasy Baseball from the April 2, 2012 issue of Baseball America.  Paul Trap, who draws the cartoons for Baseball America, is awesome.  His cartoon is the first thing I look for in every issue of Baseball America. 

Mitt Romney: If you’re looking for free stuff, vote for the other guy.

Question from woman in Peoria, Illinois: "So you’re all for like, 'yay, freedom,' and all this stuff. And 'yay, like pursuit of happiness.' You know what would make me happy? Free birth control."

Romney: "You know, let me tell you, no no, look, look let me tell you something. If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy. That’s what he’s all about, okay? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about."

See the video here.

We’re Coming Home From Afghanistan – And We Didn’t Get the Job Done

It’s pretty clear that the United States, and its allies, are leaving Afghanistan as soon as they (decently-?) can* and that, other than rooting Al Qaeda out initially (and killing Osama Bin Laden), we didn’t get the job done. We have no good reason to believe that the Afghan government will survive Taliban attacks once we leave (and I would not be surprised to see attempts by President Karzai, et al., to negotiate with the Taliban even as we are packing up to go). Whether Al Qaeda comes back after that will depend mostly on the Taliban’s views of its future interests. The whole area, i.e., Afghanistan/Pakistan/etc., will be a mess, and the level of the United States’ influence will be affected by the way we are leaving.

Clearly, President George W. Bush did not do a good job in Afghanistan. He was focusing on Iraq and did not pay enough attention to Afghanistan. But we also did not have enough troops to do both. Which raises a separate question as to why the Obama administration wants to cut the number of soldiers and Marines we have by 100,000. I know that nobody wants to do another Iraq or Afghanistan, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. (As every parent has explained to their children at one time or another.) How are going to do what we may have to do in the future with 100,000 fewer soldiers and Marines?

But back to Afghanistan: Once operations in Iraq slowed down (and eventually ended), why didn’t we do better in Afghanistan? Afghanistan was, after all, the “good war,” at least according candidate Barack Obama. Even if George W. Bush did a poor job there, why hasn’t President Obama done better?

For example, I realize we cannot control Afghanistan, but why didn’t the Obama administration do more to make sure the 2009 elections in Afghanistan were honest, instead of the fraud that re-elected President Karzai? Sure we pressured President Karzai to allow a run-off after the fraud in the first round, but what did we do before it happened?

If we were stuck with President Karzai, and if we thought he was little unstable or erratic at times, why did President Obama end the regular personal communications that President Bush had with him? Is that the way to treat the person you need to have a good relationship with to make sure things go right?

And why did so many of our people in Afghanistan have a bad relationship with President Karzai? I realize that President Karzai may be difficult to deal with (to say the least), but you have to deal with the people you have to deal with. Except we didn’t. The only person who seemed to have a decent relationship with President Karzai, General Stanley McChrystal, was fired for insulting President Obama. Which he did. But was President Obama so threatened by what General McChrystal said, that he had to fire the one person who had a good relationship with President Karzai? (President Obama’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, would not have done that – and didn’t. See, for example, President Lincoln and General George McClellan.)

Why did President Obama have to state, when he announced in December of 2009 that we were sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the date the troops were leaving at the same time he announced he was sending them in? How did that demonstrate commitment? Was that going to make the Afghanis trust us?

But most of all, as The Washington Post said last week, and as I have asked, why hasn’t President Obama been out talking to the American people and explaining to the American people about how important Afghanistan is? We have troops over there. They are committing themselves. Why hasn’t President Obama committed himself to explain this war to the American people?

The bottom line is that President George W. Bush did not do enough in Afghanistan when he had the chance. And neither has President Obama. And President Obama had the last clear chance.

And so, as liberals have been trying to claim for so long (even though it was wrong until just recently), Afghanistan is going to wind up like Vietnam. It didn’t have to, but it will. And the biggest legacy of Afghanistan will be what the legacy of Vietnam was for so long: Can the United States be trusted to keep its word? Or, as The Economist put it on February 4, 2012: “[T]he whole sorry story will send a chilling message everywhere about the worth of Western commitments.”**

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* If most Americans, or at least most Democrats, view staying in Afghanistan as a mistake, I wonder when John Kerry will be asking President Obama: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

** “The spectre of comparisons,” The Economist, February 4, 2012.

March 16: Pat Nixon’s 100th Birthday

Friday, March 16 is the 100th birthday of one of America’s great First Ladies: Patricia Ryan Nixon. While she was born Thelma Catherine Ryan, because she was born on the day before St. Patrick’s Day, her father always called her “Pat.”

While she clearly deserves a much longer post, let me at least say this: Regardless of what one may think of Richard Nixon, Pat Nixon was a great First Lady and wonderful person. As Rev. Billy Graham said at her funeral, "Few women in public life have suffered as she has suffered and done it with such grace. In all the years I knew her, I never heard her say anything unkind about anyone."

As First Lady, Pat Nixon dedicated herself to “personal diplomacy” of traveling and meeting people across the country and throughout the world. Not only did she personally greet tourists at the White House, she was the most traveled First Lady until Hillary Clinton. In 1970 she went to Peru to deliver relief supplies in response to the Great Peruvian Earthquake. In 1972 she became the first First Lady to visit Africa on a solo eight-day trip to Ghana, Liberia and Ivory Coast.

I think the epitaph on her tombstone says it best about her service as First Lady - and her life: “Even when people can't speak your language, they can tell if you have love in your heart.” That was Pat Nixon.

(I took this picture while visiting the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba LInda, California, in 1995.)

Break

We are taking a short vacation. I will be back in about a week. See you then. Go Cubs!

Do Endorsements Matter In Presidential Primaries? Yes, for Mitt Romney

Some people claim that endorsements for president don’t matter. Voters make up their own minds, they say. Maybe endorsements matter for local offices, but not for president. Well, I disagree – at least a little.

I have been supporting Mitt Romney for President because I think he is the best candidate to beat President Obama, but I have problems with Governor Romney on some issues. I don’t like parts of his tax proposals. His idea to index the minimum wage, increasing it as inflation increases, is terrible. And he has not addressed the Obamacare/Romneycare problem as well as he should.

But last October I heard Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL), a conservative I like a lot, say some really good things about Governor Romney. On Monday both Eric Cantor (R-VA), House Majority Leader, and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, people I respect for being knowledgeable and for being principled, endorsed Governor Romney. And former UN ambassador John Bolton is supporting Governor Romney. I don’t agree with Ambassador Bolton on everything, but I do where he is coming from, and if, coming from there, he supports Governor Romney, then that makes me feel better about Governor Romney.

Maybe these endorsements and these comments didn’t convince me to support Mitt Romney, but they make me much more comfortable in doing so.