Grown-up Paul Ryan explains the Republican plan to cut current spending, cap future spending, and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
So what does Barack Obama want?
“I don’t think he wants to cut spending, and I think he wants to raise taxes.”
In Christian theology, a classical definition of evil is found in the work of Augustine of Hippo. He states that the evil is not a thing itself, and therefore is not brought into being by God. Instead, evil is the privation of right order. Or, to put it more simply, evil is the state of affairs when things are the way they ought not to be. So, if a mugger mugs you and steals your money, that was evil, because humans ought not to do that. And if a tsunami leaves thousands of people homeless, that’s evil, because the world ought not to be like that. (Let’s bracket why God might allow natural evil, such as the latter example, for another post).
The point is that when you talk about evil and suffering, it pre-supposes that the world is not the way it ought to be. But that means that the world ought to be some way. If the world “ought to be” any way other than it is, then that pre-supposes a designer, who had a purpose for the world, i.e. – a way the world ought to be.
So, atheists cannot use the apparently gratuitous evil in the world as a disproof that there is a God until they define what they mean by evil, and explain how this objective standard of good and evil came to exist.
So what is evil on atheism? An answer that is NOT open to atheists is the solution above, namely, that evil is a departure from the way things ought to be. Because the universe is an accident on atheism – it is purposeless – there is no way the universe ought to be. We are accidents on atheism. There is no way we ought to be.
So evil must mean one of two things on atheism:
Neither of those options is going to allow an atheist to claim that God is evil. Because their basis for saying so is either going to be their personal preferences or the arbitrary conventions of the culture they happen to live in in arbitrary time and place.
So, it seems to me that pressing the problem of evil is inconsistent on atheism. There is no moral standard that an atheist can use to hold God accountable, in an accidental universe. You have to pre-suppose an objective moral standard, and a designer of the universe who makes that standard and makes it applicable, before you can proceed to hold God accountable to that standard. But then, you have already assumed God in order to argue against him.
To learn more about the difficulties that atheists have in making sense of morality, I really recommend this lecture (MP3) on the problems of evil and suffering by Doug Geivett (hosted by Apologetics 315), and this short 4-page paper on the problem of evil as well.
A good analysis from Dan Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute. (With links removed – you have to click through for the links he included)
Excerpt:
The Good
- Unlike President Obama, the Gang of Six is not consumed by class-warfare resentment. The plan envisions that the top personal income tax rate will fall to no higher than 29 percent.
- The corporate income tax rate will fall to no higher than 29 percent as well, something that is long overdue since the average corporate tax rate in Europe is now down to 23 percent.
- The alternative minimum tax (which should be called the mandatory maximum tax) will be repealed.
- The plan would repeal the CLASS Act, a provision of Obamacare for long-term-care insurance that will significantly expand the burden of federal spending once implemented.
- The plan targets some inefficient and distorting tax preference such as the health care exclusion.
The Bad
- The much-heralded spending caps do not apply to entitlement programs. This is like going to the doctor because you have cancer and getting treated for a sprained wrist.
- A net tax increase of more than $1 trillion (I expect that number to be much higher when further details are divulged).
- The plan targets some provisions of the tax code – such as IRAs and 401(k)s) – that are not preferences, but instead exist to mitigate against the double taxation of saving and investment.
- There is no Medicare reform, just tinkering and adjustments to the current system.
- There in no Medicaid reform, just tinkering and adjustments to the current system.
The Ugly
- The entire package is based on dishonest Washington budget math. Spending increases under the plan, but the politicians claim to be cutting spending because the budget didn’t grow even faster.
- Speaking of spending, why is there no information, anywhere in the summary document, showing how big government will be five years from now? Ten years from now? The perhaps-all-too-convenient absence of this critical information should set off alarm bells.
- There’s a back-door scheme to change the consumer price index in such a way as to reduce expenditures (i.e., smaller cost-of-living-adjustments) and increase tax revenue (i.e., smaller adjustments in tax brackets and personal exemptions). The current CPI may be flawed, but it would be far better to give the Bureau of Labor Statistics further authority, if necessary, to make changes. A politically imposed change seems like nothing more than a ruse to impose a hidden tax hike.
- A requirement that the internal revenue code maintain the existing bias against investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other upper-income taxpayers. This “progressivity” mandate implies very bad things for the double taxation of dividends and capital gains.
I’m more of a Heritage Foundation guy, myself, but this post is really very good.
Now let’s see Paul Ryan’s evaluation of it, courtesy of Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post.
Excerpt:
Meanwhile, the president has heaped praise on the Gang of Six plan, which envisions more than $1.2 trillion in tax hikes and more than $880 billion in defense cuts. (So much for Obama making “sure that we’re cutting it in a way that recognizes we’re still in the middle of a war, we’re winding down another war, and we’ve got a whole bunch of veterans that we’ve got to care for as they come home.”) As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) points out, the president’s new favorite plan includes just about every bad idea advanced so far in the debt debate:
Heavy Reliance on Revenues. The plan claims to increase revenues by $1.2 trillion relative to a “plausible baseline.” It also claims to provide $1.5 trillion in tax relief relative to the CBO March baseline. The CBO baseline assumes the expiration of tax relief, resulting in a $3.5 trillion revenue increase. As a result, the plan appears to include a $2 trillion revenue increase relative to a current policy baseline. If the $800 billion in tax increases from the new health care law are included, the plan appears to increase revenues by $2.8 trillion, without addressing unsustainable health care spending that is driving our debt problems.
Elusive Spending Restraint. It is unclear how much the plan achieves in spending savings. Based on released documents, it appears to primarily rely on cuts in the defense budget through $886 billion in reductions from the President’s budget for “security programs.”
Lack of Entitlement Reform. The plan does not address the $1.4 trillion in spending expansions in the new health care law. The health care law increases eligibility for the Medicaid program by one-third and creates a brand new health care entitlement. It does not appear to include reforms to the Medicare program. While it appears to pursue Social Security reform, it could end up creating barriers to enactment of these reforms.
Well, at least we know what Obama stands for: huge tax hikes, ephemeral domestic spending cuts, savaging the defense budget, and zero entitlement reform. I imagine that will come up in ads for the Republican presidential nominee next year.
Sounds like it’s not a good deal for conservatives.
