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He may not be running for President (despite our best efforts to draft him and continued pleas from the American public), but Paul Ryan is the biggest, thorniest bur in Barack Obama’s saddle. His speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday was another example of why.
He took Obama to task by undermining both the philosophical and mathematical justifications of the President’s desperate campaign to use class to divide America. Among Republicans, Ryan has proved himself the most-skilled at going head-to-head with Obama in the public square.
The present field of GOP candidates has done little to date to put Obama on the defensive or knock him back onto his heels. If anything, Obama has done himself the most harm by appearing clueless about the economy and vindictive toward those offering real reform ideas. But if anyone has done more to back Obama into a corner, it is Paul Ryan.
When Obama’s budget and State of the Union address were devoid of any serious deficit reduction and completely ignored his own deficit commission’s recommendations, Ryan’s budget, which became the House Republicans’ budget, countered with far-reaching proposals to reform the tax code and fundamentally re-do Medicare. Ryan pushed the public debate on the issues so far that Obama was forced to respond with his own deficit reduction...speech. But it was a start for the President. Unfortunately, he chose to do things like invite Ryan to the White House only to lecture him publicly on budgetary matters. That never worked for Obama. He eventually had to do more. He created yet another deficit reduction group and fumbled his way through the summer on the issue before calling Congress together to give a jobs speech that was, in reality, a call for more stimulus spending. He followed that speech with another on the deficit, which avoided taking on the big issues. Americans were onto his game by that point and have consistently paid him back with low approval ratings.
Meanwhile, as GOP presidential hopefuls were debating what to do about the economy, it was hard not to notice how much tax reform, if not entitlement reform, were the defining terms of the debate – and they still are. This is all because Paul Ryan defined the boundareis for 2012 early on.
Time and again, Obama has looked the weakest while trying to respond to a public debate he lost control of – to Paul Ryan.
In yesterday’s speech Ryan showed why he’s Obama’s biggest headache.
The House budget committee chairman sawed away at the flimsy philosophical foundation of Obama’s favorite meme: class warfare. And he used one of his favorite tools – math – to do so. He said:
Telling Americans they are stuck in their current station in life, that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that government’s role is to help them cope with it – well, that’s not who we are. That’s not what we do.
Our Founding Fathers rejected this mentality. In societies marked by class structure, an elite class made up of rich and powerful patrons supplies the needs of a large client underclass that toils, but cannot own. The unfairness of closed societies is the kindling for class warfare, where the interests of “capital” and “labor” are perpetually in conflict. What one class wins, the other loses.
The legacy of this tradition can still be seen in Europe today…The United States was destined to break out of this bleak history. Our future would not be staked on traditional class structures, but on civic solidarity. Gone would be the struggle of class against class.
Ryan pulled out the various data points to justify his claims that mobility is still alive and well in America:
- The Treasury Department’s latest study on income mobility in America found that during the ten-year period starting in 1996, roughly half of the taxpayers who started in the bottom 20 percent had moved up to a higher income group by 2005.
- Meanwhile, half of all taxpayers ended up in a different income group at the end of ten years. Many moved up, and some moved down, but economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most people over this period.
All of this undermines the case for Obama’s redistributive (retributional?) justice aimed at taxing the rich to lift up everyone else. But to make matters worse for Obama, Ryan also points out that Obama’s plans won’t even do what he says they’ll do:
- Let’s say we took all the income from those the President calls “rich” – those making $250,000 or more. A 100 percent tax rate on their total annual income would only fund the government for six months.
- Under the President’s policies, deficits are set to rise by a whopping $9.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
- Letting the top two tax rates expire would equal roughly 8 percent of that planned deficit increase.
- Eliminating tax subsidies for oil and gas companies would only equal 0.5 percent of the President’s planned deficits.
- And what about corporate jet owners? That provision would reduce those deficits by just 0.03 percent.
Ryan's speech was aimed at reminding Americans who they are, and demonstrating how just about everything Obama is talking about will do very little to fix the problems the President blames the rich for.
Pete Wehner writes that Ryan’s speech is evidence that he is the “foremost intellectual defender of American conservatism” around today. He’s right. No one else on the national stage is doing more to redefine conservatism for the 21st century by showing its sharp distinctions from a left that is proving ineffective under its current anointed leader, the President.
Ryan’s speech drew an immediate response from the President’s press secretary yesterday with a predictable line about how Obama has tried to work in a bipartisan way with Republicans. But so long as Obama can’t mount a defense of his vision for America to match Ryan’s, he will be swinging from the ropes, back on his heels.
Paul Ryan may not be running for President in 2012, but he may do more than any of the GOP candidates to weaken Obama over the next year.
Ryan has been on a roll- i am particularly impressed by his thoughtful concerns about the effects of Euro-socialism on the people's moral nature (the hammock vs safety net analogy) & his ability to engage Catholic social teaching (and its misuse by partisans of the left). After listening to Pelosi & Biden massacre the theology of their (supposed) church it is great to hear a politician who is seriously thinking about the intersection of politics, morality & faith. He is growing to important for the House, but no matter what he does we need him to continue to articulate the conservative position on such issues- he is the most civil & serious man in politics today.
Posted by: mm | October 28, 2011 at 10:19 AM
Watching Paul Ryan eloquently tear down liberal politics is a rare treat. We must keep him around-at all costs to the Republicans-and to the absolute detriment of the Democrat party.
Posted by: Amy Fox | October 28, 2011 at 01:41 PM
I am despondent that most, if not all, of the Republican candidates, are not endorsing and repeating Ryan's solutions. Ryan's ideas can lead us to victory, but our candidates don't appear to be paying attention to him.
Posted by: Valerie Van Eaton | October 29, 2011 at 05:09 PM
The media thrust their microphones before the yammering pie-holes of the parasites who've chosen to scream that society owes them a living. Paul Ryan speaks for the millions of us -- the 53% -- who have jobs. We WILL be heard.
Posted by: Jim | November 03, 2011 at 06:48 PM
Run Paul! Run!
Posted by: Dave Wallerius | November 05, 2011 at 08:12 AM