SkimIt
Young Voters Speak Out: Each day, RR.com will spotlight politically minded youth writers from throughout the U.S. speaking their minds on Election 2012. First-time voters, student journalists and new graduates will debate the Obama vs. Romney race to the White House. Young Democrats, Republicans and ‘Undecided’ Americans are eager to play politics and choose the next Commander & Chief.
Read Adam Poltrak's thoughts from a left-leaning perspective:
To call Paul Ryan a fiscal conservative, is to be as creative with the facts as he was when he claimed he had run a sub three-hour marathon. Let's be clear here, a fiscal conservative is someone who seeks to balance the budget by cutting spending, increasing revenue, or doing some combination of both.
While Ryan would love to shoot a shrinking ray at the federal government, cutting discretionary spending to three percent of GDP by 2050, he would apply that same device to taxes. He's proposed eliminating the Estate Tax entirely and easing the crushing (historically low) tax burden besetting America's top earners. How would he offset the cost of such tax cuts? Closing tax loopholes. Which ones? You'll see. A budget hawk like Paul Ryan wouldn't cut taxes without paying for it. Would he?
Creating a Myth
Here's a shocker: the Congressman's budget proposal wouldn't create a surplus for another 30 years. In other words, all this talk about voting for Romney/Ryan so that we don't pass the bill on to our children is utter nonsense.
We in the media don't get to call Ryan a fiscal conservative simply because it fits the narrative. We don't get to make up some fictionalized battle between the tight-belted conservative and the loose-pursed liberal. Neither of these characters exist. President Obama has presided over the smallest average annual spending increase since Eisenhower, and Ryan favors unfunded tax cuts in the midst of what he and his party have dubbed a debt crisis.
During the 2008 campaign, former welfare recipient Joe the Plumber, took Obama to task for his subversive Marxist plot to redistribute the wealth. Four years later, a VP candidate is planning to oversee a seismic shift of dollars from the disadvantaged, to the absurdly advantaged -- and the outcry is nowhere to be heard.
Do the Arithmetic
Paul Ryan would slash Medicare, gut Medicaid, weaken welfare, and dismantle a few dozen government agencies that do sinister things like protecting the environment, or, providing family planning resources.
Paul Ryan is not a fiscal conservative. He is a man who wants the wealthy to keep as much of their income as possible, at the expense of almost every social program in existence. Lest you think I'm being hyperbolic, look at his proposals and try to draw a different conclusion.
Being a fiscal conservative means balancing the budget with -- as Bill Clinton called it -- arithmetic. It doesn't mean dropping a bomb on the entire system. Ryan? A fiscal conservative? Fiscal anarchist fits the bill far better.
