"It was the best of budgets, it was the worst of budgets, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, etc. etc." With apologies to Dickens (I wrote the word "budgets," Dickens wrote everything else), what else can I think after reading the two most respected newspapers in America in an effort to become more educated and better informed?
For example, yesterday's Wall Street Journal described the Paul Ryan budget proposal in the following manner:
"The introduction of Paul Ryan's House fiscal 2013 budget yesterday is an important political moment even if it has no chance of becoming law this year. It shows that the reform wing of the Republican Party is alive and well, one year after Democrats and the press corps had called Mr. Ryan's fiscal 2012 budget political suicide."
What an inspiring, noble journey! I was further inspired by today's Wall Street Journal when I read that Daniel Henninger described the Ryan-Camp tax plan in the following glowing terms:
"The tax system we have now is a 20th-century tax system, whose purpose was to pay for what government bought. And bought and bought. Republicans, anti-status quo insurgents and upwardly mobile independent voters should recognize that with the Ryan-Camp tax plan (two low personal rates, a lower corporate rate) now joined to the high-growth consensus of these presidential challengers, the U.S. has one chance this year and next, when the new code would become law, to rejoin the real world, not some 60-year-old dream world."
"Rejoining the real world" sounds really exciting! Mr. Ryan and his fellow Republicans--trying to save us from those out-of-control Democrats! However, the New York Times painted a different picture of Congressman Ryan and his budgetary exploits in its March 21, 2012 editorial:
"As he rolled out his 2013 budget on Tuesday, Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, correctly said that he and his fellow Republicans were offering the country a choice of two very clear futures. The one he outlined in his plan could hardly be more bleak."
Unless one believes that the real world is a bleak and depressing place, the views expressed in these two newspapers couldn't be further apart. What the Times calls "bleak" the Journal calls "ambitious." But the Times' critique doesn't stop there. Here is a small sampling of their scathing attack:
"Mr. Ryan became well known last year as the face of the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times. His new budget is, if anything, worse, full of bigger, emptier promises. It is largely in agreement with the plans of the Republican presidential candidates."
The Times is also critical of how Mr. Ryan proposes to cut spending--"increase defense spending and shift all the cuts to domestic programs, which will probably include food stamps, the federal payroll and mortgage guarantees."
What is an unbiased follower of the news supposed to do? Who knows what to believe anymore? Personally, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to be exposed to two such divergent points of view. What do the rest of you think?
In my previous post, I contrasted the points of view of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal regarding Paul Ryan's vision for the federal budget. Today I would like to bring two other participants into the fray:
Here is the website for the house budget itself: http://budget.house.gov. The language is a little dry and cliche-driven, but the site, through charts and a side-by-side comparison, presents a clear comparison between the house budget and the President's plan.
And then there is the Huffington Post, which reported the passage of the house budget a few days ago in the following manner:
"The fiscal plan the House passed Thursday by a near party-line 228-191 vote would reshape and squeeze savings out of Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health insurance programs for the elderly and poor. It would force deep cuts in a wide range of spending, including rail projects, research and Pell Grants for low-income college students.
It would block President Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes on couples earning above $250,000 a year. Instead, it would collapse the current six income tax rates into just two, with a top rate of 25 percent – well below the current 35 percent ceiling – while erasing tax deductions and other breaks that the GOP plan failed to specify.
Overall, the GOP budget would cut spending $5.3 trillion more deeply over the next decade than Obama would – out of more than $40 trillion that would be spent. It would cut taxes by $2 trillion more than the president's plan. That leaves Republicans seeking a hefty $3.3 trillion in deeper deficit reduction than Obama."
Language can be a powerful tool. Do those six income tax rates have to collapse into just two? Can't they be streamlined into two instead? And the use of the word "hefty" conveys to me that the Huffington Post is skeptical that $3.3 trillion is available to be cut. I'm that much more skeptical that $40 trillion is out there to be spent.
Apparently, President Obama has an opinion about the House budget as well:
WASHINGTON — President Obama opened a full-frontal assault Tuesday on the federal budget adopted by House Republicans, condemning it as a “Trojan horse” that would greatly deepen inequality in the United States, and painting it as the manifesto of a party that had swung radically to the right.
Listing what he said would be draconian cuts to college scholarships, medical research, national parks and even weather forecasts, Mr. Obama said the Republican budget was “so far to the right, it makes the Contract With America” — Newt Gingrich’s legislative insurgency of 1994 — “look like the New Deal.”
The above two paragraphs are from the front page of today's New York Times.
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