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There is no doubt in my mind that Paul Ryan is a good choice for the Republican ticket, at least right now. Ryan is smart, personable, has a good life story to tell and appeases the far right of the party. That is most important heading into the convention because the party base has not exactly had a love affair with Mitt Romney. And while Romney has been all over the map philosophically during his political career, no one can accuse Ryan of changing course. Ryan also is savvy. He has proven he can run circles around more senior members of the house on both sides of the aisle. Just ask John Boehner.
But by picking Ryan, Romney now doubles down on the economy and, more importantly, the budget. And when it comes to the budget, Romney is not telling us much and has made it clear he isn’t going to tell much more before the election. Just like his taxes, personal taxes that is.
When George Bush was running in 2000 he laid out a plan of tax cuts and even turned it in to a bipartisan Congressional committee. The committee crunched the numbers and predicted that it would cost 1.3 trillion over nine years, which turned out to be an underestimate. Bush never blinked, didn’t back down and went ahead and did it and we ended up with a huge deficit.
So here we are 12 years later and Romney says his tax cuts, which appear deeper than those of Bush, would not be costly in the long run. And he says cutting here and cutting there but not cutting into the defense budget will accomplish this. Eliminating certain tax breaks and closing loopholes he says will do it but he does not list those breaks and loopholes but, instead, will work with Congress on that element. Congress? Really?
Paul Ryan has a plan but it is skimpy right now but, at least, he has something on paper.
The 2012 election will come down to a handful of states and a sliver of the unemployment number. Right now we are 8.2 percent. But really the number we are agonizing over is about 3.2 percent since nearly every sophisticated survey shows that of employable Americans, about five percent really have no desire to be employed.
Romney says his mostly secret tax/budget plan will reduce unemployment to 6 percent.
That is admirable but now prove it. Otherwise it is like buying a pig in a poke.