Collective Conscious

About a month ago, Rep. Paul Ryan pro­posed a rev­o­lu­tion­ary bud­get road map that was designed to com­pletely elim­i­nate the fed­eral debt by hold­ing true to fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. It’s finally start­ing to get some well-​​deserved atten­tion. Newsweek’s teaser this morn­ing:

The GOP talks a good game about reduc­ing the fed­eral deficit. So why is it ignor­ing Rep. Paul Ryan’s detailed Roadmap?

Per­haps the most telling bit:

Ryan’s pro­posal is instruc­tive not only because it clar­i­fies the dif­fer­ence between lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive pol­icy, which is that seri­ous reduc­tions in gov­ern­ment mean seri­ous reduc­tions in pop­u­lar enti­tle­ments; it’s also instruc­tive about the road ahead for the GOP.

Politico picked up the story too, run­ning an Ideas piece by Rep. Ryan him­self:

Wash­ing­ton has long been aware that, unless reformed, our largest enti­tle­ment pro­grams — Medicare, Med­ic­aid and Social Secu­rity — will go bank­rupt and, in the process, deal a crush­ing blow to our bud­get and economy.

What this means is that the Repub­li­cans’ top bud­geter in the House is finally being taken seri­ously. Bet­ter that he is. He’s one of the more hon­est pro­po­nents of the true mean­ing of con­ser­vatism that the GOP has got in the bullpen. While I won’t debate the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of his bud­get plan here, it’s a dis­cus­sion worth hav­ing and one that his ideas ought to be a part of. They should be brought to the pub­lic, too. A town hall full of seniors fac­ing the effec­tive abo­li­tion of Medicare and Social Secu­rity would greatly help the ide­o­log­i­cal trans­parency of the Repub­li­can Party. Dontcha think?