Paul Ryan's "Adult" Budget

What's so mature about mugging the poor to underwrite tax cuts for the rich?

By David Corn
MotherJones
Thu Apr. 7, 2011 12:01 AM PDT

Google "Paul Ryan budget serious," and you'll be swamped with 22 million results. Add the word "adult," and 239,000 results will appear. There's been much musing within the politerati that the Wisconsin Republican's proposed 2012 budget, which was released on Tuesday and would slash Medicaid and privatize Medicare, is not helpful for Republicans during the high-stakes showdown over spending cuts and a possible government shutdown. But within elite opinion, Rep. Ryan, the influential and wonky chairman of the House budget committee, has won perhaps the most vaunted accolade in Washington: "adult."

MSNBC talk-show host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP House member, hailed Ryan's "adult conversation." Time's Joe Klein praised Ryan's proposal as "an act of political courage" (while taking sharp issue with specific provisions). The subhead on Jacob Weisberg's review of the plan in Slate noted that it's "brave, radical, and smart." Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who recently chaired a national commission on the deficit, called Ryan's budget "a serious, honest, straightforward approach to addressing our nation's enormous fiscal challenges."

Yet how courageous is it to whack poor folks and promote tax cuts that favor the wealthy? That's the core of Ryan's budget. Even deficit hawks like Bowles and Simpson recognize this. In the same statement touting Ryan's endeavor, the two declare that Ryan's plan

relies on much larger reductions in domestic discretionary spending than does the Commission proposal, while also calling for savings in some safety net programs—cuts which would place a disproportionately adverse effect on certain disadvantaged populations.

(More here.)