A budget that can't budge

The Ryan Plan won't become law. So what's it for?

What is the much-discussed Paul Ryan plan?
 
You probably know the plan’s main elements: A huge cut in Medicaid, a big cut in the value of future Medicare coverage for those under age 55, substantial cuts in discretionary domestic spending, plus a big tax cut aimed primarily at upper-income taxpayers.
 
Theoretically, this plan constitutes the first step toward the 2012 federal budget. But only very theoretically. The Senate will not pass it, and the president will not sign anything like the Ryan plan. If anything, the Ryan plan pushes us toward a future in which the federal government is funded for the next two years by stopgap continuing resolutions, postponing big decisions until after the 2012 elections.
 
So is the plan an electioneering document — the first draft of the Republican campaign message for 2012? Again, probably not. The campaign message will be determined by the presidential nominee, not by the chairman of the House Budget Committee. Review the probable nominees, and it’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Haley Barbour or Chris Christie running for president on the basis of a platform much more radical than that offered by Ronald Reagan in 1980. 
 
Third option, then: Is the plan a negotiating ploy, a first offer to get serious bipartisan talks started with Democrats on entitlement reforms? Possibly. But the plan seems as likely to provoke the Democrats into fighting rather than negotiating. From a Democratic point of view, the Ryan plan looks like a Republican demand for all the marbles: Spending cuts for Democratic constituencies to fund tax cuts for Republican constituencies. More relevantly, from a Democratic point of view, the Ryan plan looks like a lethally unpopular demand for all the marbles — exactly the same demand that Democrats turned so decisively against Republicans in 1995. For Democrats, the Ryan plan is not a good faith opening gambit. It’s a temptingly vulnerable political target.

If the plan is not a real-world budget proposal, not an electioneering document, not a negotiating position — then what is it?
 
Answer: The Ryan plan is a Republican “memo to me" — an attempt by a party emerging from a troubled history to answer the question, “Who are we?” The answer is not aimed at the general public, but at Republicans themselves.

It goes like this: “Perhaps we used to be the people who introduced Medicare Part D. No longer. We have rediscovered our identity as the people who shrink government, not the people who expand it. Here is the proof.”

This “speaking to ourselves” mission explains many things about the plan that are otherwise puzzling.

• Why are there no revenue enhancements of any kind — not even fees or excise taxes that have no negative impact on incentives or savings?

• Why is Medicare protected in its existing form for a decade while the changes to Medicaid go into effect immediately?

• Why is Social Security exempted entirely?

• Why is agriculture treated so lightly — $30 billion in savings over 10 years, all of them (interestingly) to be decided by the Agriculture Committee, a unique concession by a Budget Committee otherwise determined to centralize decision-making?

Pose these questions and the answers become obvious:

These days, Americans over 55 vote heavily Republican. Under-55s lean Democratic, under-30s overwhelmingly so. (That’s the reverse, by the way, of the situation that prevailed as recently as the 1980s). Farmers vote Republican. Medicaid recipients do not. The deficit grows because the deficit reduction plan includes a big additional tax cut to upper-income taxpayers. And so on.

Well, that’s politics. The president’s health care and stimulus plans were larded with much grosser payoffs to Democratic constituencies.