The GOP’s rising fiscal policy star is too cautious for radical economic reform yet too radical for his own party.
Peter Suderman from the June 2010 issue
PAUL RYAN, free market extremist: With an economics degree in his pocket and small-government conservatism in his blood—Calvin Coolidge appointed his grandfather as a U.S. attorney—Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan rose quickly from Jack Kemp acolyte to ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee before the age of 40. A supply-sider and deficit hawk, Ryan is the author of the GOP’s only Congressional Budget Office–certified “road map” to balance the budget and eliminate the long-term deficit. His proposal calls for politically courageous cuts to beloved entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid—cuts so drastic that New York Times contributor James Kwak summarized their effects under the headline: “People will die.” Ryan has argued that the central battle in American politics is between “individualism and collectivism” and said, “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
Paul Ryan, free market sellout: Ryan voted in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the widely despised bank bailout. He also endorsed the taxpayer-funded auto bailout, citing “mounting hardships” in a part of his state once dominated by carmakers. His ballyhooed spending plan is so incrementalist that it wouldn’t balance the budget until 2063. And this year, while defending his policies to The New York Times, the congressman declared, “I’m not trying to win an award from the Cato Institute.”
Which of these two snapshots represents the real Ryan? They both do.
The Close:
"No politician’s record is pure. Perhaps it isn’t reasonable to expect anything different, since politics is the business of compromise. For advocates of limited government, Ryan remains one of the most important allies in Congress. But those advocates can’t help but notice that the best hope for fiscal responsibility and free market reform is a plan to balance the budget 50 years from now that will never, ever pass.
"No politician’s record is pure. Perhaps it isn’t reasonable to expect anything different, since politics is the business of compromise. For advocates of limited government, Ryan remains one of the most important allies in Congress. But those advocates can’t help but notice that the best hope for fiscal responsibility and free market reform is a plan to balance the budget 50 years from now that will never, ever pass.
Ryan claims victory just for showing “you can put these ideas out there and you can survive.” Survive, yes, but thrive? Asked directly about his plan’s political prospects, he pauses for an unusually long time, then shrugs and smiles, as if to welcome both the uncertainty and the challenge. “When I have it all figured out,” he says, “I’ll let you know.”"
Peter Suderman (peter.suderman@reason.com) is an associate editor at reason.
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