You may not like Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but you must admit that it’s courageous. You simply must. By order of the Washington establishment, you may question whether Ryan’s plan is sensible or humane or even remotely honest, but you have to confess that it is undeniably an extraordinary act of bravery, or else pundits will beat the confession out of you with swoony prose.
To New York Times columnist David Brooks, Ryan’s 73-page budget outline — it’s not an actual budget — is “the most comprehensive and courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes.” Here at Time.com, Joe Klein wrote that it’s “without question, an act of political courage,” while Fareed Zakaria declared that “Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.” The Economist agreed: “Credit where credit is due; whatever you think of Paul Ryan’s budget, it is politically gutsy.”
This is just weird. Ryan is a conservative Republican from a conservative Republican district, a committee chairman in a conservative Republican caucus. He was reelected last year with 68% of the vote. Sorry, Joe, but I do question whether it was really courageous for him to propose huge tax cuts for the rich, squeeze health care for the poor, and promise that nobody over 55 — the heart of the conservative Republican base — will have to make any sacrifices. Honestly, does anyone think this week has been bad for Ryan’s career?
It certainly would have been courageous — not Winston Churchill courageous, and certainly not running-into-a-burning-building or fighting-overseas courageous, but at least politically risky — for Ryan to veer off from the Republican party line to embrace tax increases. It might have been equally courageous, though less relevant to debt reduction, to revive President George W. Bush’s idea of privatizing Social Security, which Ryan supported before it went down in flames in 2005. But there’s a reason Social Security is known as the third rail of politics, and this time around, Ryan didn’t touch it. One can only imagine the paroxysms of glee that would have erupted in Washington green rooms if he had.
