Saint Paul

Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday morning. A previous blog post predicted him or Tim Pawlenty/Bob Portman to win the veepstakes. Another previous blog post analyzed Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity".

One quick bizarre insight: William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, has predicted the Republican Vice Presidential Nominees two years in a row! Yes! This means that the editor, months before the 2008 Republican Convention, rightly foresaw that a certain Grizzly Mom from Alaska would be on the ticket! Fascinating...

Now back to Paul Ryan. Personally, I would love to work out with the Wisconsin congressman. People on the hill constantly gossip about his sweaty morning regimens- specifically P90X. Also, when he was a rookie in his twenties he paid the bills by working part time at a 24/7 Sports and Fitness Club. Hence his beautiful physique. And the ladies are swooning.

For hackneyed talking points about the veep pick, I recommend visiting Politico, NYTimes, WashPost, or the Economist. Or for more conservative sources, the Weekly Standard or National Review. Here are some of my own personal thoughts about Mitt's decision:

• Paul Ryan is one of the leading Republican Party ideologues. A self-proclaimed Randist, he fervently analyzes fiscal issues and offers bold conservative proposals to fixing the looming national deficit and debt. (Note: "Path to Prosperity"). So what does this mean? It means ample excitement for the conservative base, but hesitance among the %5 of the U.S. population who call themselves "independents".
• About riling up the base: markedly more people are attending Romney events. A big boon to the lacking esprit de corps pre-VP pick. 
• The downside to choosing a radical fiscal conservative is hesitance among independents. During a voter registration effort, my twin sister overheard someone definitively switch back to the Obama camp upon hearing Ryan was nominated. The New York Times and several other publications have reported the same case happening across the country: moderate voters are turned off by the whole tax-cut/Medicare 180 that Ryan proposes. This trend is not statistically supported, but might wring some truth. 
• Furthermore, Romney needs at least one-third of the Hispanic population's vote. He currently polls at %27 favorability among Hispanics. Marco Rubio would have fixed this problem. Ryan can't. 
• The Ryan pick offers a stark referendum on Medicare, taxes, and entitlements. This is good for Obama, who can turn away from defending his economic record and play the Buffet-Rule game, i.e. chastising tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires. This means the Romney camp can't get away with attacking the unemployment rate 24/7- they have to also deal with the radical Ryan budget.
• Nate Silver of the New York Times wrote a recent blog post about how VP nominees sway their home state vote. Paul Ryan comes from Janesville, Wisconsin; according to Silver, this will most likely move the state 2 points towards being red. Right now Obama has a 6 point polling advantage in Wisconsin, in 2008 he won the state by 15 points. 
• In terms of demeanor, Ryan is Obama's counterpart on the other side of the aisle. The Wisconsin congressman is poised, elegant, polite, well-spoken, and of noble character. He is not like Palin, Biden, or Bill Clinton- he cheeks would not flush red as he low-balled a lunatic pundit on national television. Instead, he is wonkish, a handsome dork who precociously chairs the House Budget Committee. Neeedless to say, Ryan isn't timid or boring on the stump like Bob Portman or Tim Pawlenty. He successfully casts the Obama administration in a gloomy light, and elicits cheers from fed up right wing crowds.
• My last thought is of national security. Neither Republican on the 2012 ticket has served in the armed forces or done foreign policy work. Sure, you can count Romney's Bain experience as "global business expertise". It's a chicken excuse. China, the Middle East, the EU- this is the stuff that matters. Not outsourcing some company to overseas manufacturing. For better or for worse, however, American citizens have tunnel vision that focuses on the economy. Reference Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan. Syria and Iran are like toothpicks on a dinner table where the main entrees are unemployment and budget cuts. 

Now to finalize this post, here are some eye candy pictures of our potential future Vice President:

Reaching for a gun? More like a calculator.

Making Grandmas happy since 1970.

Wonkish hands.

Path to Prosperity or Decline?: The Ryan Budget

A few months ago the Republican controlled House passed Congressman Paul Ryan's idea of a budget plan, idealistically titled the "Path to Prosperity". The plan never passed in the Senate, but nevertheless addresses some core policy problems facing the country:

• reforming the complex tax code
• reducing the deficit
• reducing debt as a share of the economy
• reforming Medicare 

How did the CBO calculate this? 

This comes with lots of hidden assumptions...

1. Medicare

• Ryan claims that annual healthcare spending per household has increased fiftyfold since 1960 ($520/household) to 2012 ($25,300/household). Do these estimates account for inflation? 
• 10,000 baby boomers are added to Medicare everyday (wow- not good!)
• This screenshot of a House Budget Committee YouTube video accurately illustrates the status quo:

(Taxpayers give money to Medicare, Medicare reimburses providers, providers give care to patients.)

• The status quo disregards the quality of provider care
• Ryan ensures no changes for citizens 55 years or older
• This screenshot from the same video shows how the Ryan budget would enact patient-centered medicare where patients choose from a host of competitive providers, theoretically lowering costs and increasing care

• Poorer recipients receive more federal support while wealthier recipients receive less- a fair maxim

2. Tax Reform

• Reduces the corporate tax rate to 26% 
• Lowers the "individual rate that small businesses pay" to 23%
• Reforms the tax code to be "competitive, fair, and simple"
• Divides tax code into two brackets: lower bracket taxed at 10%, upper bracket taxed at 25%
• Big Problem: Offers no solutions to close/fix existing loopholes

Problems:

Paul Krugman

"And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit — but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes."

~New York Times

Ezra Klein

"That’s a lot of numbers. But it’s also clarifying. The big cut here isn’t to health care for old people, though that gets the headlines. It’s to health care for poorer Americans. The biggest category of cuts is “everything else,” which shrinks to implausibly low levels, and Ryan, to my knowledge, has never detailed, even in broad strokes, how he gets it that low. But since he’s opposed to further defense cuts — he in fact raises spending on defense in the next 10 years — it seems inevitable that the non-defense side of “everything else” would have to shrink considerably, and that means cutting quite a bit from income supports and veterans’ benefits and infrastructure.

Then there’s the whole question of where Ryan gets the $6.2 trillion he’ll need to fill the hole in his tax plan."

~Washington Post