...from the 1972 movie Deliverance? Well the op-ed page of the New York Times has its own version this morning, between Paul Krugman and David Brooks.
First this, from Paul Krugman (with my own comments in bold):
Many commentators (that would be you, Mr. Brooks) swooned earlier this week after House Republicans, led by the Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, unveiled their budget proposals. They lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness.
Well, they should have waited until people who know how to read budget numbers (like me) had a chance to study the proposal. For the G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless.
David Brooks answers:
But it should be acknowledged that the Ryan plan has several grave weaknesses. (Okay, so I'm not a Nobel Prize-winning economist.)
As presently configured, it is unacceptable to moderate voters and stands no chance of passage. Substantively, it does not address the structural problems plaguing the American economy: wage stagnation, inequality, declining growth rates. It doesn’t have an answer to rising health care costs. Nor does it leave room for future policy creativity; there’s no money to allow future generations to rise to unforeseen challenges. So, while acknowledging that Ryan has done the nation a great service by providing a starting point, we should expect his budget to evolve as the debate goes forward.
Krugman goes in for the kill:
How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column. (Bam, Smack, Pow!)
And now for the knock-out punch:
In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous.
And it’s also cruel.
So the pundits (like Mr. Brooks) who praised this proposal when it was released were punked. The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness. (Ouch!)
But Brooks may have the last word (and it's a good one):
The best thing about the long-term budget proposal from Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is that it forces Americans to confront the implications of their choices. If voters want taxes that amount to roughly 18 percent of G.D.P., then they are going to have to accept a government that looks roughly like what Ryan is describing.
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The Democrats are on defense because they are unwilling to ask voters to confront the implications of their choices. Democrats seem to believe that most Americans want to preserve the 20th-century welfare state programs. But they are unwilling to ask voters to pay for them, and they are unwilling to describe the tax increases that would be required to cover their exploding future costs.
Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Democrats, thus, face a fundamental choice. They can either reverse President Obama’s no-new-middle-class-taxes pledge, or they can learn to live with Paul Ryan’s version of government.
Until they find a way to pay for the programs they support, they will not be serious players in this game. They will have no credible plans and will be in an angry but permanent retreat.
Brooks is right. Just as David Stockman, President Reagan's first budget director, concluded in his book, The Triumph of Politics, if Americans can't cut spending, then they should at least be expected to pay for the government they get.
And I think that's where this whole conversation is leading. Americans want certain services from the government that the private sector cannot deliver, so they will have to grow up and resume paying for them. Contrary to what the tea party has been saying, Americans are not over-taxed. Federal taxes as a percentage of GDP are the lowest since the 1950s:
A good start would be repeal of the Bush tax cuts.
Hear Hear!
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