To listen to Barack Obama and fear-mongers like Sen. Patty Murray, Rep. Paul Ryan's budget would lead to a fiscal apocalypse.
But when I look at the Ryan budget, I see business as usual in Washington – the kind of business as usual that will indeed lead inevitably to an economic apocalypse because it fails to move the country an inch close to constitutionally limited government, fails to address unsustainable "entitlement" programs and actually increases the national debt for the next 10 years.
This is a conservative budget plan?
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You mean to tell me we can't agree – even among Republicans – that Washington is spending way too much?
The Ryan budget increases spending by 3.4 percent every year. That's not a cut. It's an increase. And this is the Republican plan.
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You mean there is no fraud, waste and abuse in our current spending plan that can be eliminated – not even that Republicans can find?
I thought Paul Ryan was some kind of budgeting genius. That's what I keep hearing. Why doesn't he expose to the public the horrible corruption that is part and parcel of Washington's sacred spending priorities and rally the American people around some real changes?
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Should we really be borrowing money to give to Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion provider in the world?
Should we really be borrowing money to subsidize NPR and PBS with all the programming now available to Americans on cable, satellite and the Internet?
Should we really be borrowing money to sustain the National Endowment for the Arts and what has amounted to an official department of the art of degradation and debauchery?
Should we really be borrowing money to hand out hundreds of millions, if not billions, in grants for crazy studies that benefit no on in the U.S. except those who perform them?
Should we really be borrowing money to double food stamp dependency?
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Should we really be borrowing money to enact Obamacare?
What are these Republicans thinking about?
The Ryan budget is not a genuine alternative to anything proposed by the Democrats. It's a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging and potentially fatal wound.
Washington is overspending now. Ryan proposed increasing overspending by 3.4 percent annually over the next 10 years. There's nothing conservative about that.
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There's nothing conservative about conceding that the debt will keep rising for the next 10 years. That's surrender.
There's nothing conservative about conceding that the interest on the national debt will continue to rise for 10 years. That's surrender.
There's nothing conservative about saying we can't have a balanced budget for a decade – if then. That's surrender.
Wouldn't it be conservative to freeze the debt right where it is and force government to live within its means?
In fact, isn't that the only way we're likely to achieve a balanced budget – ever?
If this is conservatism, count me out!
We need real answers to the crisis that faces us now – not imaginary solutions for crises 10 years down the road. We don't have 10 years to address our problems. Conservatives shouldn't be kicking the can down the road any more than liberals should be.
But that's what we're facing.
The leadership of the Republican Party, including much of the emerging new leadership, like Ryan, is not offering any meaningful alternative to the Obama Democrats.
Slow change is not going to save this country.
We need to a political 180 to save it.
Who is going to articulate that message before it's too late?
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