EconomicsUSA: RyanPlan: Obama threatened by teaching American public re parameters of coming national debt crisis

House of Representatives member Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) presented a meticulous plan to constrain the deficit in the USA federal budget almost 2 weeks ago (Apr5,2k11).  I've been thinking of it ever since, and I keep trying to weigh its various facets -- even tho I haven't blogged on the subject (due to other areas of my life exhausting my attention and energies).  In the meantime,  I watched on TV while our President Obama put forth the appearance that he was taking great measures to restrain the growth of the national debt (Apr13,2k11), while asking for a raise in the debt ceiling to accomodate the debt's drastic rise into the stratospheric trillions of dollars (Apr15,2k11), despite the fact that he opposed raising the debt limit only five years ago on the Senate floor (Mar16,2k5).  Pivotting, he now wants to continue his Presidential practice of spending liberally and increasing taxes on everyone who earns more than $250,000 a year (the precise demographic who are the nation's chief job creators) .  On this score, the Prez has produced an inaction plan, a plan that postpones any concrete measures on decreasing the federal debt, distancing talked-about solutionary actions so far into the future as to suggest an infinite regression -- upward.


In this,  Obama definitely dismissed offhandedly the demands of Citizens for Public Justice that had even some very leftist evangelicals calling for "intergenerational justice" as the lead-off  for a "moral" requirement regarding public finances under discussion here (Mar3,2k11).  The second of CPJ-USA's two-pronged demands was their attempt to determine in advance whose entitlements from the public purse woud remain sacrosanct -- that is, woud make entitlement payments impossible to cut -- a move undoubtedly implying further increments, since the general economic turbulence woud render the current stipulated amounts to recipients less valuable in purchasing power over every ticking day, due to inflation and price raises.   Thus increasing further the federal debt of the entire nation.  The main entitlements are Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.  These coudn't be touched by the Ryan Plan or any other aimed at cutting expenditures (to 2008 levels, which seems to be something of a consensus among woud-be debt reducers).  But it seems to me, that with the apparently longterm perdurability of the current givens in regard risibg prices and increasing inflation generally, the Obama notion of irreducible entitlements itself woud promise to keep demanding more and more raises of the payments to recipients, and thus more and more taxes not only from individual pockets and household budgets, but the rise in taxes and in national debt -- for which the children and babies and unborn will have to pay.  If you have a child, a price tag has already been put on her/his head as a proportion of the trillions of debt that the Obama "Plan" promises.


Chris Wallace, TV host and tuff interviewer of Fox Sunday Report, today presented a segment interviewing and promoting dialogue between a Republican fiscal leader, Senator Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and a Democrat advocate of unlimited entitlements and uncapped federal debt, following the policy of intergenerational injustice advocated by the Obama "Plan" of Inaction, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Maryland).



April 17, 2011

Along with the intergenerational-justice issue (let alone the twin issue of an 
economic structural crisis more generally speaking),  Wallace with an astute 
Republican panel consisting of Dana Perino, Nina Easton, Kevin Madden, 
plus a leading liberal commentator Juan Williams discussed candidates for 
the Republican nomination for President in the November 2012 elections.  I'm 
opposed to the candidacy of Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Donald 
Trump and anyone else who may be too fat, who have health issues of 
obesity, and shoud be barred for that reason alone from running.  I'm obese 
myself.  I appreciate the service that the mentioned and implied candidates, 
who may possibly run, have given and are giving to our  country and society.  


However, the USA Presidency in the 21st century is simply too demanding 
for such a health concern not to register as an unwritten disqualification for 
that specific h+est office in the land;  every individual voter has the r+t to 
impose additional qualfications, whether stated in the USA Constituion or not. 
And I think that the nonconstitutional disqualification of obesity, qualification 
of nonobesity, shoud hold for all voters patriotic enuff to exercize a rational 
moral stand (a finding of a truly political ethics) on the issue; and further, I 
believe that it shoud hold both for the offices of President and Vice President 
alike, Democrats and Republicans and any third-party candidates alike.  Of 
course, the panelists did not bring this human-health aspect into their discus- 
sion, a crazy blindspot when the health and apparent health of Presidential 
and VP candidates is --  or, at least, shoud be -- a vital concern to all
responsible voters.   If we all have to look forward regarding the debt, 
then we all shoud be looking forward in regard to the physical stamina we 
may expect of the person we elect to that h+ office. In my opinion, a h+ risk 
of heart failure or stroke is a disqualifier, one that accompanies obesity.


Of course, when cutting the fat from the Republican Presidential field (the 
Democrats under Obama coud take the game on this issue alone, now that 
he's cut out smoking apparently entirely, having outsmarted and controlled
that previous addiction, just as he kicked heroin a long time ago), we still 
do not get to the vital policy concerns that were put on the table in 
Wallace's earlier federal economics segment; just as the personal physical
weit issue did not come up, nor were the variations in candidate's views 
on the federal debt, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security touched 
upon in the segment on Republican candidates segment, by the Fox 
News Sunday panel today.  All Americans want to know how the Repub
candidates think and stand on these issues.


-- EconoMix


Further reading and research:


"Paul Ryan's budget woud slash $6 trillion,  reform entitlements, cut taxes"
   (Politico)
"Obama pivots, eyes Medicare changes, tax increases" 
  (7news WHDH-TV)
"Obama: Congress must--and will--raise debt limit (Associated Press via 
  Steven Goddard.Wordpress.com)
"[Senator] Obama on raising the debt ceiling -- excerpt from Mar16,2k5
  (Geek Politics)