At the beginning of April, Republican Representative Paul D. Ryan introduced to the country his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a far-reaching plan to get America out of its debt crisis through a series of austere spending cuts and fundamental tax reform. The proposal was notable for being the first serious and honest attempt to deal with this country’s unsustainable spending habits.
A few weeks later, President Obama took the stage at George Washington University to present his alternative. After attacking Ryan and his supporters as nothing more than lightweights and cowards, Obama got around to his own ideas. The welfare state as we know it can be preserved, Obama argued, and we don’t even have to raise middle-class taxes to do it. All we need to do is trim entitlements around the edges, cut waste and abuse and tax the hell out of the rich.
At the end of the speech, it was clear that Ryan wasn’t the coward in the room. Obama’s plan is fundamentally dishonest. No amount of trash talk can hide the fact that it just won’t work.
Our entitlement system is broken. Within a very short amount of time, programs like Medicare and Social Security will be insolvent. A little tweaking here and there won’t save them; they must be rethought and structurally reformed. There are only two ways to do this. We either drastically reduce expenditures or raise a lot of revenue.
One half of Obama’s solution is to make some sizable cuts to government spending—a fine start, but not nearly enough. The other is to continue with the soak-the-rich rhetoric he’s lately been employing with increasing desperation.
In this country, the wealthiest Americans pay a hugely disproportionate share of the taxes. In 2004, even after the Bush tax cuts took effect, the richest 10 percent of Americans earned 44 percent of the nation’s income but paid 68 percent of the taxes. The wealthiest 1 percent paid a whopping 37 percent. Whether or not such a progressive tax is fair—a reasonable question that reasonable people can and should discuss—the fact is that there’s only so much you can take. To keep the government at the size Obama wants, everyone—rich, poor, and middle-class—will have to contribute. Everyone’s tax burden will have to increase dramatically.
That’s the fundamental question facing Americans today: whether everyone will pay more taxes or receive fewer government services. Ryan and his Republican colleagues have been frank about that choice; Obama has chosen to ignore it. He preferred to tell a popular lie rather than a hard but necessary truth. And he had the audacity to question Ryan’s courage.
Although I think it’s generally sound, the Ryan plan raises a number of questions that Americans must grapple with. Almost every proposal it makes will be met with opposition—some of it reflexive and reactionary, some of it compassionate and valid. People are going to disagree as to how we can best meet this crisis; that’s healthy. But it’s time to get serious. For a long time we’ve all had our heads in the sand, but thanks to Ryan everyone—even our leaders in Washington—have begun to own up to the truth. It’s time for a great national conversation about who we are as a people and what role we see our government playing.
There needs to be two sides to that conversation. We’ve heard the conservative one. But faced with a historic opportunity to defend the welfare state and offer a progressive vision of spending reform, Obama chose to play the politician. He dithered and avoided the hard choices. He said we could have it all. He came up lacking.
It’s time for Obama to make a decision. Either he must step up and become a responsible leader or he must step aside and let Ryan do it.
Nathaniel French is a senior theater major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
