Why are most fiscal conservatives ignoring Paul Ryan’s actual record?

By David McElroy · August 13, 2012

In the last 48 hours, Paul Ryan has been crowned the great hope of fiscal conservatives. If they honestly believe that, they’re more desperate than I thought, because the only way to see Ryan as fiscally conservative is to completely ignore his record.

It seems that the presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee is seen as a fiscal conservative simply because of his budget proposal in the House. His proposal would have balanced the budget without raising taxes, but it was an absolute fairy tale of a proposal, partly because it would have required decades of future presidents and Congresses to stick to it as laid out. Is there anybody in the world stupid enough to believe that’s even remotely possible?

Mainstream political reporters are painting the selection of Ryan as a turn to the “radical right” to placate the Tea Party’s supporters. A writer for Time magazine even said that Ryan was the choice of the “libertarians on the Wall Street Journal editorial board….” (I haven’t run into any actual libertarians yet who are excited about Ryan.)

There’s only one little problem with this narrative building him up as a fiscal conservative or even libertarian. Ryan’s voting record is full of support for things that no fiscal conservative could support, much less a libertarian. Anybody who believes that his candidacy is a win for libertarians or fiscal conservatives isn’t paying attention.

One of the most egregiously irresponsible spending measures of the last few years was the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which forced U.S. taxpayers to purchase the so-called “toxic assets” of big banks. Pure and simple, it was a bailout for banks to allow them to get loans off their books. Ryan not only voted for TARP, but he enthusiastically supported it. Take a look at the video from the House floor (at the end of this article) of Ryan begging the House to pass TARP and warning of dire consequences if it didn’t pass. Is that a fiscal conservative?

Ryan voted for the auto bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. Is that a fiscal conservative?

He’s voted for Medicare expansion, housing subsidies and extension of federal unemployment benefits. Are those things that actual fiscal conservative support?

In addition, he’s voted in favor of a national ID, making the PATRIOT Act permanent, surveillance without a warrant and No Child Left Behind. He favored keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely. Maybe worst of all, he voted for the so-called “stimulus” plan of 2008. That’s right. Ryan believes in the voodoo economics of John Maynard Keynes. Is any of this the mark of a fiscal conservative, much less a libertarian?

The idea that Ryan is a fiscal conservative or libertarian is puzzling. The facts don’t support the contention. (Read more about his record here.) So why are so many people saying it anyway?

For those on the progressive left, anybody who isn’t on their side is on the “radical right,” so their statements at least make a little bit of sense, even if paying attention to the record would force them to modify their statements. As for conservatives, though, I think it’s purely wishful thinking combined with the irrational belief that they have to support anything and anyone who they see as their only hope against Barack Obama.

Frankly, I don’t see a lot of difference between an Obama presidency and a Romney presidency. Obama has no interest in cutting any spending and Republicans are more interested in talking about it than doing it. Let’s be honest. Federal spending is not going to be cut. Period. It doesn’t matter who’s elected president in November. The runaway train of federal spending is impossible to stop. There’s not enough political support for the painful choices that would have to be made. It’s not going to happen.

Paul Ryan is marginally more fiscal conservative than the big spenders of the Obama administration, but I can’t see that he’s honestly any more responsible than Mitt Romney would be. All of the mainstream candidates support massive spending. There’s a tidal wave of debt that’s crashing its way toward us — and the Democrats and Republicans are arguing over whether stopping a gallon or two of spending is too draconian.

There’s no serious national discussion of anything approaching what’s necessary to stop the runaway train of debt. Any fiscal conservative or libertarian who tries to put any hope in Ryan as their savior on this issue is going to be badly disappointed, even if the Republicans win this year.

Note: This article has been edited to correct an error. The original article stated that Ryan supported the 2009 “stimulus” bill, but that’s incorrect. He voted for the 2008 “stimulus” bill, but not the one the following year.

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When I saw the headline, I assumed it was satire, but I quickly realized that somebody really was dumb enough to be confused about this: “University of Minnesota digs into why people with generous unemployment benefits take longer to find work.” That was a headline in the Minneapolis Star-Tribute last weekend. Whoever could take this question seriously doesn’t understand human nature. The article says, “…[W]hen people are offered more generous unemployment benefits — such as a longer time horizon and higher payments — they take longer to find new jobs.” Well, duh. Is anybody surprised by this? The researcher who led the study says she sees no evidence that it’s because people are slackers, but she doesn’t understand human nature. If somebody is paying you while you’re unemployed, your incentive to look hard for a job is lower and you can be pickier about which job to accept. You can turn your nose up at bad jobs. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for people who are struggling to find work. I was there just five years ago. But I do understand human nature. When you’re broke and the wolf is banging at your door, you’re willing to take anything.

Sophia was only 5 years old when I met her and her 9-year-old sister, Bella, one day when they were bored and needed somebody to entertain them. Their dad was a casual friend who worked as a manager at a restaurant where I used to go and they had to come to work with him one evening while their mom was recovering from some dental work. Those girls and I hit it off and we had a great time that night. I ran into their parents again tonight and got a great report on the entire family. The girls are 10 and 14 now, which is hard for me to believe, and they looked beautiful and full of energy in their recent photos. The family seems to be doing much better now than they were five years ago, so it was really a joyful update for me. There’s something magical in watching children grow up in healthy and happy ways.

I’m having dinner Thursday night at a restaurant where I haven’t been in awhile and I’m sitting at the same table where I had my first date with a woman about six or seven years ago. (I might be a bit off on the time frame.) I’ve never told this story publicly, but I might as well. This was a woman I met online and everything seemed great. We arranged to meet here and things went well enough that she invited me to her house, which was nearby. I’m going to skip the details, but the key fact is that she finally told me — hours later, at her house — that she is married and her husband was out of town. She wanted to keep seeing me when he wasn’t around, but I left her house and never spoke to her again. It was a very odd experience.

The man in the suit here is a malignant narcissist. When I first saw this picture of Donald Trump giving a “thumbs up” sign as he posed with a baby who survived the murderous monster in El Paso a couple of weeks ago, I assumed that even his supporters would be horrified. To anyone who understands normal human reactions, it is a shocking demonstration of a man who believes the world revolves around him, but I’ve been surprised to see some people say his reaction was perfectly normal. The truth is that it’s the pose of a man without empathy — someone who is so accustomed to trying to promote his own empty false self that he doesn’t even know how to fake the proper response to such a horrific event. An emotionally healthy person would focus on the child at such a moment, but Trump looks as though he’s at a campaign event with the child of a happy donor. This has nothing to do with ideology or party. The man is mentally ill.

I’m slowly accepting the fact that people who want some form of socialism or controlled economy genuinely don’t understand that new goods and services are created by the voluntary interactions of free people. They seem to view the world through the lens of a static supply of semi-abstract “resources” which can be distributed in some theoretically “fair” way. But they apparently don’t understand that resources are almost useless unless paired with ideas, ingenuity and voluntary cooperation. The things which make life easier to live (in the physical sense) all come about because of this voluntary interaction and trade to bring added value. If you misunderstand this core truth — that the supply of good things increases through voluntary human interaction — you will assume the world is a zero-sum pie to be divided. And you will ultimately try to force the rest of us to obey you. That is evil.

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