Here’s an article from the liberal Washington Post that quotes Ryan explaining why he made the video.
Excerpt:
We can no longer let politicians in Washington deny the danger to Medicare – the danger is all too real, and the health of our nation’s seniors is far too important. We have to save Medicare to avoid disruptions in benefits for current seniors, and to strengthen the program for future generations. House Republicans have put forward a plan to do just that. Democratic leaders in Congress have failed to produce a plan – it has been 755 days since Senate Democrats even passed a budget. Meanwhile, the President’s plan would empower a panel of 15 unelected bureaucrats to cut Medicare for current seniors, while failing to save the program for future retirees.
This video lays out the clear choice our nation faces on Medicare: Will Medicare become a program in which a board of bureaucrats manages its bankruptcy by denying care to seniors? Or will leaders work together to save and strengthen Medicare by empowering seniors to choose health care plans that work best for them, with less support for the wealthy and more help for the poor and the sick? House Republicans have advanced solutions to save Medicare. Instead of working with us, the leaders of the Democratic Party have opted to play politics with the health security of America’s seniors.
It’s probably the best video I’ve ever seen to explain the benefits of consumer-driven health care, as opposed to government-run rationing of health care by a board of unelected elites. Either we choose Paul Ryan’s plan or we pay our money and then wait in line for health care that someone else will approve, or not.
As the U.S. languishes, Chile posted a head-turning 15.2% yearly gain in GDP in March, and forecasts for the year are rising. Why can’t we do that here?
A year ago, Chile lay in rubble, victim of the world’s fifth most powerful earthquake. So Chile’s 15.2% growth is a big bounce from a bad setback.
But it shouldn’t be dismissed as an anomaly. It’s a showy number, but not the only one.
The same day Chile released its data, Goldman Sachs raised its 2011 growth forecast for the country to 6.4% from 6%. In its annual regional business index, Latin Business Chronicle ranked Chile as having the best business climate in Latin America in 2011.
Such numbers are so alien to the U.S. in the economically debilitated Obama era, it makes sense to look at what Chile has done.
First, Chile’s policies for long-term growth were put into effect in the 1980s by the group of Milton Friedman-inspired economists known as the Chicago Boys.
Under them, Chile’s pension privatization cost nothing and left the country with no net debt. The private funds now hold assets worth 90% of GNP ($185 billion) — capital used to develop the country. Already, Chile’s education and infrastructure are the best in Latin America as a result.
Second, there’s free trade, of which Chile is a global champion, signing at least 58 treaties to gain access to 2 billion customers.
That’s a big reason Chile is close to full employment and is scrambling to attract growth-hungry U.S. entrepreneurs — and getting them.
[…]Bamrud says Chile has been turning heads with investors the past year and a half because of its emphasis on improving its corporate environment, its tax regime and its economic freedom, all of which rate highly.
“Chile has always been held out as a model for Latin America, but the reality is … it’s now a model for the U.S.,” he said.
Corporate taxes are the second lowest in Latin America at 18%, behind Paraguay’s 10%. The Latin average is 28%.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist for Latin America, Alberto Ramos, says Chile has wisely fostered growth by reducing the size of government and not printing too much money.
In 2011, it cut government spending to 5% of GDP, or $700 million, more than its projected 5.5%. So GDP has room to grow 6.4%, rather than 6% as first estimated.
Chile is doing the exact opposite of the socialist Barack Obama. Chile is cutting government spending, removing tariffs, enacting free trade deals, and cutting corporate taxes. Businesses and investors are moving there, and there are not enough people to work at all the jobs that are being created. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, communist dictator Hugo Chavez just reported 0.6% gain in the last quarter of 2010.
May Day — socialists’ paean to class warfare — evokes memories of Soviet tanks in Red Square and leftist radicals rioting. But Chile celebrates the actual empowerment of workers.
May 1 marks the 30 years since Chile became the first nation to privatize its social security system. By turning workers into investors, the move solved an entitlement crisis much like the one America faces today.
“I like symbols, so I chose May Day as the birth date of Chile’s ‘ownership society’ that allowed every worker to become a small capitalist,” wrote Jose Pinera, former secretary of labor and social security and the architect of this pension revolution. He is now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
What he designed has succeeded beyond all expectations. Yet Congress remains reluctant to adopt anything like it, despite efforts by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to partially privatize an American system.
Instead of paying a 12.4% Social Security tax as we do here, Chilean workers must pay in 10% of their wages (they can send up to 20%) to one of several conservatively managed and regulated pension funds. From the accumulated savings, they get a life annuity or make programmed withdrawals (inheriting any funds left over).
Over the last three decades these accounts have averaged annual returns of 9.23% above inflation. By contrast, U.S. Social Security pays a 1% to 2% (theoretical) return, and even less for new workers.
[…]In 2005, New York Times reporter John Tierney worked out his own Social Security contributions on the Chilean model and found that his privatized pension would have been $53,000 a year plus a one-time payout of $223,000. The same contributions paid into Social Security would have paid him $18,000.
The biggest threat to American solvency is the growth in entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The Democrats are stubbornly opposed to reforming these benefits, because they like the idea of transferring wealth from children, who cannot vote, to people who depend on government hand-outs, who can vote. And the best part of their scheme is that young people can be easily indoctrinated by the public schools to believe that have their future mortgaged away to buy votes is a good idea. It’s really very sad and unfair to young people.
I’m very disappointed in the president. I was excited when we got invited to attend his speech today. I thought the president’s invitation to Mr. Camp, Mr. Hensarling and myself was an olive branch. Instead, what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to addressing our countries pressing fiscal challenges.
What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief. What we heard today was a political broadside from our campaigner-in chief.
I guess it’s no coincidence that last week when the president launched his billion dollar re-election campaign was the week we launched our effort to try and get this debt and deficit under control and get our economy growing.
Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the president created a fiscal commission. Then with his budget he disavowed his fiscal commission. He ignored all of its recommendations. Now he wants to delegate leadership yet again to a new commission. How are we to expect different results? And the measurements of results of this new commission are lower than the measurements of success of the last commission that ended a few months ago.
We need leadership. We don’t need a doubling down on the failed politics of the past.
[…]Exploiting people’s emotions of fear, envy, and anxiety is not hope; it’s not change. It’s partisanship. We don’t need partisanship. We don’t need demagoguery. We need solutions. And we don’t need to keep punting to other people to make tough decisions. If we don’t make those decisions today, our children will have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.
Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling are the two best-known Republican budget wonks.
President Obama called your plan “a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them … but we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.” How do you respond?
I don’t even know what to say about that. First of all, we’re not even talking about cutting taxes. We’re talking about keeping tax revenues where they are [by making the Bush tax cuts permanent] and cleaning up all the junk in the tax code for a flatter, fair, simpler tax system. So we’re not talking about cutting taxes. We want to keep the tax revenues where they are and fix the tax code. And with respect to all the spending—you know, that partisan-spending rhetoric—if you don’t fix entitlements, Charlie, if you don’t get spending under control, there’s not going to be any money left for those other things, for roads, for bridges, for education, for the environment. So I’m amazed that he would use that kind of hyperbolic, hyperventilating rhetoric to describe our plan.
I find it interesting that last week we heard William Lane Craig chastise the child Sam Harris for making “stupid and insulting” remarks about Christians, we are now getting Paul Ryan making similar assessments of our naive, childish President. Have Christians and conservatives finally reached their limit of tolerating stupidity and incompetence?
WINTERY KNIGHT 