Matt Miller: The roads on Ryan's map may not exist

On taxes, debt, health care, his 'plan' calls for amazing feats of engineering.

By MATT MILLER
StarTribune
Last update: August 23, 2010

Dear Paul Ryan: In recent days, Congressman, Ryan-mania has reached a wonky fever pitch. Paul Krugman says you're "the flimflam man." The Wall Street Journal's editorial page fired back that your "Roadmap for the Future" features "radical honesty." And the New York Times says you'll be at the center of events if Republicans win big this fall.

Which is why it's important to be clear that your vaunted plan to get our fiscal house in order, and to restore a culture of self-reliance rather than dependency on government, isn't a "plan" at all -- at least not in the way most people think of one. It is a set of assumptions -- a kind of rigged forecasting exercise, really -- that shows how a certain underlying philosophy could play out fiscally in an aging America.

But it doesn't balance the budget, lower national health costs or assure faster economic growth. It's not fiscally conservative enough for my taste, if anyone in Washington still thinks that this means advocating that government pay for what it chooses to spend.

Let me say before offering a good-faith critique that I have taken lashes from fellow Democrats for proposing to tie initial Social Security benefits to an index based on prices, not wages (too dull to detail, but this means bigger trims in future benefits than you've proposed). I have also urged my party not to demagogue needed reductions in Medicare's growth rates when Republicans propose them. So I am not a liberal defending the status quo.

Here are my biggest issues with your "plan":

(More here.)