Rep. Paul Ryan has introduced his budget proposal, the work of a responsible adult. The screeching began almost immediately, with shouts that Ryan and the orcs with him were hellbent on starving widows and orphans.
Keep your eye on the ball. We are no longer debating whether or not there will be draconian cuts. That’s the reassuring news. There will be draconian cuts, regardless of what Congress does. Either they will be something like what Ryan has proposed, or they will come across the board when we flat run out of money. Now there’s a cut for you, when all the fraudulent promises come crashing down over the course of a few days.
This helps put something else in perspective. The Democrats believe in big government. The Republicans believe in less big, but still ginormous, government. Consequently, Republicans have the constant role of taking the lunacy rolled out by the Democrats, and trying to make it work in some responsible way. Ryan’s plan is a variation on that perpetual theme. If he succeeds, there will be savage cuts, taking us back to the pre-Cambrian era of spending — 2008, say. If he fails, then there will be real financial reform, another name for which is bankruptcy.