In unveiling the GOP budget plan for 2014, Rep.
Paul Ryan published
an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that laid out some of
the thinking that behind the latest iteration of “The Path to
Prosperity.” Here’s a snippet:

…the most important question isn’t how we balance the budget.
It’s why. A budget is a means to an end, and the end isn’t a neat
and tidy spreadsheet. It’s the well-being of all Americans.

That line got under the skin of James Poulos, the
libertarian-leaning commentator late of PJTV and currently with
HuffPost LIVE. At Forbes, Poulos powerfully dilates on why Paul
Ryan’s sort of thinking leaves so many younger people cold.

In what world is the purpose of a federal
budget to ensure the well-being of all Americans? Franklin
Roosevelt’s? Even if Ryan’s critics on the left are dead certain
that his budget does precisely the opposite, it’s striking — and
deeply revealing — that Ryan himself views government accounting in
this way. This is a terrible foundation for trying to connect with
the youth vote. Not only do younger voters who lean leftward sense
a huge gulf between Paul’s budget and his vision of a budget’s
purpose. Younger voters who lean libertarian recoil from
both the budget and the vision. And younger voters who lean
conservative are left holding the bag — stuck with the burden of
trying to account for how it is that balancing the budget in 10
years, or whatever, is part of a morally urgent mission to achieve
the well-being of all.

At a time when Michael
Bloomberg’s machinations underscore how insanely adaptable
the mania for “public health” has become to any and all
interventions into private life, Ryan’s budget vision reads all to
well into the script:
we must act now to change,
because everyone’s well-being is at stake.

Read the whole piece here.

whitehouse

I think Poulos is onto something regarding younger voters –
charitably defined as anyone under 45 years old – regardless of
political ideology. The expectations for government are changing in
all sorts of unanticipated ways. A majority of Americans continues
to say that government is doing too much but a majority also wants
the government to provide basic safety net functions. Folks such as
Ryan and Barack Obama seem to read that situation as one in which
the state can and should continue to provide not simply for the
poorest among us but for the vast “middle class” that usually
includes about 90 percent of people. That was George W. Bush’s
compassionate conservatism – and Ryan voted for No Child Left
Behind, Medicare drugs, and TARP and auto bailouts – and it’s
Obama’s expansive notions as well. I think it’s credible to see
Ryan (and many conservative Republicans, Obama, and the Senate
Democrats (who have zero pulse among them) as in the same basic
camp of still expecting the government to be a warm blanket that
pretty much covers everything you do in your regular day.

What’s different now is that there is an
alternative out there – in the form of characters such as Rand
Paul, Justin Amash, and other “wacko birds” – that is looking
increasingly viable. When you’ve got conservative and libertarian
Republicans attacking the garrison state for 13 hours straight and
also championing copyright and IP reform, gay marriage, pot and
hemp legalization, even self-styled “Young
Guns” such as Paul Ryan and
historically youthful presidents such as Barack Obama start
looking pretty old pretty quickly.

My take on the Ryan/GOP budget, which got oddly positive
responses from a number of small government groups despite pledging
to increase annual federal spending by 42 percent over 10 years’
time, is
here. My take on the Senate Democrats’ budget is
here.

This seems like a good time for the Byrd’s magisterial cover of
Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages.”