What I Want From Ryan

Is certainly not what he is offering. I don't want a vision of America's future that is bleaker than its past, especially not as someone who would like to think he's got a lot of time ahead of him. I don't want to live in a country that worships the wealthy and enacts policies to benefit them at the expense of the many. I don't want to live in a millionaire's sand box complete with a military. I don't want economic policy that is without supporting quantitative data and that even anecdotal evidence suggests has been a failure.

Paul Ryan is offering me a lot of things that I do not want. But to Paul Ryan's credit, he is offering me something I do want, and something that is necessary for America. Paul Ryan is offering me a vision for America's future, and more importantly, Paul Ryan is talking about difficult decisions that most politicians want to avoid discussing. Recently, I blogged about wanting politicians and candidates to stop placing blame in the past and start offering solutions for the future. Paul Ryan has done just that.

Now don't get me wrong, Ryan is like many Republicans when it comes to having faith in economic theory without merit, and his deficit reduction plan would add to the deficit by decreasing revenue intake by far more than it would cut spending. I'm sure Ryan thinks that the economic growth that results from lower taxes on the super rich will offset some of that cost, but of course we all know how that fairy tale goes.

But Ryan is willing to have hard talks about entitlements and we need that talk. Do I think we should make Medicare a voucher program as Ryan proposes? I don't think so, but something needs to be done to control costs that were spiraling even before the economy tanked. Would America benefit from a conversation about the nature and future of entitlement programs even if the starting point is the far right dystopia of Paul Ryan? It's probably better to start there than to simply avoid the conversation as we have been doing.

It's easy for liberals to hate Paul Ryan because he does paint a bleak, dystopian future, one in which we abandon most of the population at the expense of the wealthy few and the war machine. It is easy to hate him because he is probably smarter than most of his Republican colleagues and was able to put their ideas onto paper and introduced it as a plan for America's future. It is easy to hate Paul Ryan because his ideas are for the most part very bad.

But I can't completely hate Paul Ryan because even though I hope he loses big in November, I would like to see someone attempt to control entitlement spending. Paul Ryan is willing to have the conversation. If for nothing else I can't hate him for that.