I took some time to get all the facts and let things play out before commenting on the Ryan-Murray budget deal. With the academic semester coming to a close at most colleges and universities, it’s time to issue a grade here as well.<\/p>\n
ECONOMICS: F. <\/em>There’s no need to discuss all of the details because this deal does nothing to cut spending. Rand Paul summed it up appropriately when he commented, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Spending cuts are only meaningful if<\/em> they are real cuts (not reductions in proposed increases) and if<\/em> they occur in the present. Real spending cuts are essential to any negotiated deal<\/em>. Paul Ryan is correct when he bemoans the stream of continuing resolutions that have comprised a de facto budget in recent years, but this is largely Obama’s fault and is no reason to Republicans to surrender.<\/p>\n EFFORT: F<\/em>. The Republican leadership clearly wants to cut a deal and go home.<\/p>\n POLITICS: F<\/em>. This was the most difficult part to assess early on, as this deal is primarily about politics. The Republicans (once again) are giving up their most powerful card–control of the purse strings in Congress–to avoid potential backlash from another “shutdown.” Moderate Republicans seem happy to run against the Obamacare rollout fiasco next November, but the midterms are almost 11 months away. Besides, the real problem with Obamacare is the content, not the administration. Governments are generally inept at such tasks, but Obamacare’s troubles are due to design flaws that were identified long before the President signed the bill into law.<\/p>\n When I heard Boehner and Rove trashing FreedomWorks and the tea party, everything became clear. The old-line Republicans are in effect joining the Democrats in an effort to marginalize the libertarian wing of the Republican party as obstructionists. The idea is to thwart primary challengers with strong constitutional and libertarian bents, and then re-court their followers when the general election rolls around. Even if it works and we get a few more Republicans in the House and Senate, little if any will change. I’m not interested in party numbers, but in the direction of the country.<\/p>\n OVERALL: F<\/em>. Paul Ryan is not all bad, but his desire to get a deal at any cost is not good for the country.<\/p>\n I understand why some view the deal as the lesser of evils, but if it is, then we need to reshuffle the deck. We’ll have that opportunity in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I took some time to get all the facts and let things play out before commenting on the Ryan-Murray budget deal. With the academic semester coming to a close at most colleges and universities, it’s time to issue a grade here as well. ECONOMICS: F. There’s no need to discuss all of the details because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}