Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Commentary

Paul Ryan explains the vision of conservativism

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Rep. Paul Ryan
Rep. Paul Ryan

This article is long! You will have to print it out and read it in little bits. It took me 15 minutes to read!

The title is “How Will Conservatism Become Credible Again?”. Paul Ryan is one of the “ideas” conservatives in the Congress. His job is to think up new bills and initiatives that reflect conservative ideals.

Let’s learn about America

Here, he talks about how the conservative vision of government values liberty and personal responsibility over equality of outcomes and “social justice”:

Nowhere was the Western tradition epitomized more memorably than in the Declaration of Independence. By “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” all human beings are created equal…not in height, or skills, or knowledge, or color, or other nonessentials…but equal in certain inalienable rights – to live, to be free, and to fulfill their best individual potential, including the right to the “material” such as property needed to do this. Each individual is unique and possesses rights and dignity. There are no group or collective rights in the Declaration. Nor does basic human equality imply “equal result.” It means “equal opportunity”: every person has a right not to be prevented from pursuing happiness, from developing his or her potential. The results should differ from one to another because “justice” or “fairness” gives each individual what each has earned or merited.

The great conservative purpose of government is to secure these natural rights under popular consent. Protecting every person’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness should be the great and only mission of legitimate government.

He talks about how the Constitution’s purpose is to enable prosperity through free market capitalism:

The authors of the Constitution surrounded economic freedom with a multitude of guarantees: freedom of contract against government interference… private property rights… patents and copyrights…standard weights, measures, and monetary values…punishment of counterfeits…freedom under law for interstate and foreign commerce…enforcement of agreements in law courts… uniform bankruptcy laws, and other protections.

They promoted Smithian free markets to produce resources for strong military defenses and to keep America free of economic dependency on other nations. But they also expected commercial life to encourage certain moral qualities: personal responsibility to work, save, create businesses, hire employees, pay off their debts, earn the rewards of merited effort, moderate appetites, practice honesty and justice in business dealings, self-discipline, industriousness, timeliness, plus trust and confidence in other persons.

And he talks about how America is a country where social conservatives and fiscal conservatives should be united:

A “libertarian” who wants limited government should embrace the means to his freedom: thriving mediating institutions that create the moral preconditions for economic markets and choice. A “social issues” conservative with a zeal for righteousness should insist on a free market economy to supply the material needs for families, schools, and churches that inspire moral and spiritual life. In a nutshell, the notion of separating the social from the economic issues is a false choice. They stem from the same root.

Did you know that Republicans believe in the right to life, the sanctity of marriage and the public expression of faith? These values were present at our founding, and Republicans hold to them because they are American values.

Since America’s first political principles establish a high but limited mission of securing the natural rights of all, conservatives should expect government to fulfill that entire mission…by enforcing every human being’s natural right to life, which is the first clause of the social compact that formed America, the Declaration of Independence.

A credible conservatism will also seek to secure the privileged legal status of marriage. The traditional family must be protected as the indispensable mediating institution for developing the moral qualities of a free people.

A credible conservatism will resist the purging of faith from the public square. It will make public space for the practice of faith because belief is a central pillar of a free and prosperous society. Nor can government welfare programs substitute for the faith-based love that unites citizens in free bonds of charity and compassion.

Recommended for my readers from at home, or abroad, who need a refresher on the vision of conservatism… or a breath of fresh air from the fetid leftist gasses emanating from the White House.

More articles on conservatism from the New Ledger are here.

We haven’t forgotten our principles.

News

Round-up of recent Republican legislative initiatives

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Tom Coburn

The Maritime Sentry had this post about Senator Tom Coburn’s Patient’s Choice Act.

“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor; using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs; and ensuring universal, affordable health care for all Americans.

Tom Coburn is a medical doctor, not an ACORN lawyer who sues banks to force them to make risky loans. Commenter ECM sent me this article he wrote for the left-wing Huffington Post, in which he explains his new bill.

Marsha Blackburn

Congresswoman Blackburn urged the Senate not to pass the Democrat health care bill, citing the experience gleaned from Tennessee’s own bankrupt single-payer system.

In 1995, the state implemented TennCare, a health program modeled after Medicaid. While it covered more uninsured adults, the budget-busting program grew at a 1.5-percent annual rate, with costs skyrocketing from $2.5 billion in 1995 to $8 billion by 2004, Blackburn said.

“This program started to consume every new dollar that was generated in the state,” Blackburn said. Additionally, Tennessee residents who already had private health insurance were dropping their plans to get on the free health program, she said. “We started hearing stories of individuals trying to buy ‘uninsurable’ letters so they could get on TennCare.”

By 2005, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen cut 170,000 adults from the program and reduced benefits for thousands more to get a handle on the soaring costs. “Our experience with trying to do universal coverage ended up being a disaster,” he recently told the AP.

Don’t forget about Mitt Romney’s socialized health care plan in Massachusetts, which is also bankrupt. When you make something “free” demand skyrockets, and the people who are being taxed to pay for it stop working or leave. That’s reality.

Lamar Alexander

Senator Lamar Alexander introduced a bill last week to distribute the government’s newly acquired stock in GM and Chrysler to taxpaying Americans.

“Instead of the Treasury owning 60 percent of shares in the new GM and 8 percent of Chrysler, you would own them, if you were one of about 120 million individuals who paid taxes on April 15,” Alexander explained. “This is the fastest way to get the stock out of the hands of Washington and back into the hands of the American people in the marketplace where it belongs. The stock certificates would be in your name, not that of your government.”

…“It would be helpful to GM and Chrysler if they had 120 million Americans interested in their success.”

And Senator Mike Johanns urges oversight on the TARP money already redistributed to the Obama’s union special interests, who desperately need it to pay for their underfunded pensions. In contrast, Democrat Barney Frank called GM’s CEO to complain about a GM warehouse closing in his home state. (Recall that Obama called the mayor of Detorit to assure him that GM would not be moving their headquarters out of Detroit). The Road to Serfdom.

Mike Pence

Congressman Mike Pence introduces the American Energy Act, a bill to increase clean domestic energy production.

The bill has 4 main objectives:

  • Increase production of American-made energy in an environmentally-sound manner.
  • Promote new, clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear, clean-coal-technology, wind and solar energy.
  • Encourage greater efficiency and conservation by extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and rewarding development of greater conservation techniques and new energy sources.
  • Cut red-tape and reduce frivolous litigation.

Good idea since gas prices are up $1.00 per gallon from the beginning of the year.

Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal, my pick in 2012 for President, is championing EIGHT bills to get tough on criminals.

Here are two of them:

  • House Bill 445 will, as reported by the Baton Rouge Advocate, “suspend a license for two years the first time a driver refuses to take a Breathalyzer test [and] a subsequent refusal would strip a driver’s license for four years.”
  • Senate Bill 166 would, as stated in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “change the offense of driving with a suspended license for a previous DWI-related conviction from a traffic law violation to a violation of the criminal code.”

The rest are here, addressing child abuse, child welfare, sexual misconduct by teachers, monitoring of sex offenders, and more!

Commentary

When all else failed, Republicans will try conservative ideas

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Jennifer Rubin over at Pajamas Media writes that the GOP has had enough with the Democrats’ big-spending socialist agenda, and they are ready to try something completely different: small government conservatism. Instead of just being the party of “NO”, the GOP intends to market a series of common sense conservative policies directly to Americans.

Rubin writes:

Minority Leader John Boehner has a new video out listing a number of Republican themes and promising a Republican alternative budget from reformer Rep. Paul Ryan. The themes are simple: lower taxes, restrain the growth of government, a market-based health care plan, domestic energy development, and ending bailout mania. Boehner’s video does not have many details, but its core message is clear: Republicans are tired of being the punching bag for an administration that wishes to paint itself as the only source of ideas capable of solving the country’s problems.

But I didn’t like John Boehner’s video as much as this one from Rep. Paul Ryan:

He can make the case in the House of Representatives:

And look, he can take on the leftist news media, too:

Fun! Rubin continues with some links to wonderful policy ideas:

Truth be told, for months, Republicans inside and outside of government have been throwing out ideas on how to revive the economy.  Americans for Tax Reform has ten ideas to help small business. Newt Gingrich has twelve ideas to promote job growth and recovery. And budget draftsman Paul Ryan has had “A Road Map for America’s Future” for some time. But the mainstream media is uninterested in reading through all of this, much of the conservative blogosphere is too invested in carping about the shortcomings of elected leaders and in fighting among themselves, and the president, of course, has made a habit of disparaging his opposition’s lack of creative ideas.

…the task here is to capture the public’s dissatisfaction with the Democrats’ bailout and pork-laden approach to governance and remind voters that Republicans in fact do have ideas — ones that favor lower taxes and less spending.

As soon as I read this, I rushed over to the Cato Institute to see their take on Ryan’s plan, and I found an article by Michael D. Tanner.

He likes Ryan’s plan:

Health Care: Ryan would reform our employment-based insurance system by replacing the current tax exclusion for employer-provided insurance with a refundable tax credit of $2,500 for individuals, and $5,000 for families. This would encourage employers to take the money they currently spend providing health insurance and give it directly to workers, who could then use it to purchase competitive, personally owned insurance plans. That would be insurance that met their needs, not those of their bosses, and people wouldn’t lose it if they lost their jobs.

Ryan would also allow workers to shop for insurance across state lines. That would mean residents of states like New Jersey and New York, where regulation has made insurance too expensive for many people, could buy their insurance in states where it cost less. And increased competition would help bring insurance costs down for all of us.

Since I am a clean-living, never-married single guy, this would basically add a bunch of money to my take home pay. More money for donations to Reasonable Faith and the Discovery Institute! So far so good!

Tanner continues:

Social Security: Like Medicare, Social Security is hurtling toward insolvency. Rep. Ryan would preserve the program unchanged for current recipients and workers older than age 55, but he would allow younger workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes privately through personal accounts. Unlike the present system, workers would own the funds in their accounts, and when they died, they could pass any remaining funds on to their heirs.

Taxes: Rep. Ryan would radically simplify today’s hopelessly complex, cumbersome and bureaucratic tax code. He would give filers a choice: They could pay their taxes under existing law, or they could choose a new simplified code, with just two tax rates (10 percent on the first $100,000 for joint filers; $50,000 for individuals, and 25 percent above that).

Human Events has some more details on the tax policy:

The tax reform aspect of the bill is appealing, offering a simplified tax system that has only two rates and eliminates the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and the death tax. The bill also abolishes taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends among other aggressive tactics that will make a noticeable, long term change.

And this interesting quotation from Ryan:

“Our fate is not inevitable…we can change it,” he said. “I want to be the Paul Revere of fiscal policy in this country.”

Now, that two-tier tax plan was one of the reasons why I preferred for Fred Thompson in the primaries… but the rest of my party wanted style, instead of substance. You blithering toadies! Who cares how warm his belly is? He opposes taxes and abortion, you hamster-brains! Oh, well. There’s always 2012, where we can try to run Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal or maybe even Michele Bachmann!

For more on Ryan’s plan, here is an article in the Wall Street Journaltat he wrote. (H/T Western Standard Shotgun Blog)