It’s a common libertarian complaint that no major-party candidate was, is, or ever will be, libertarian enough. So, Goldwater wasn’t good enough, Reagan wasn’t good enough, and Paul Ryan’s not good enough. That’s to be expected — these men didn’t set out to be good enough for us. They weren’t running as libertarians, but as conservative Republicans. They were, and Ryan is, running in a different and much larger party.
They represent, though, support for the worthy goals of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. Whenenever I read William Redpath, Chairman of the LP, contending that Reagan wasn’t libertarian enough, I think: Yes, but have you done more to advance our goals? (So that Redpath’s not mistaken, I will note that my question is rhetorical.)
There’s a good article on Paul Ryan, U.S. representative from Wisconsin’s first district, in the latest issue of Reason, entitled, “Paul Ryan: Radical or Sellout?”
Ryan has a proposal to restore stability to the federal government’s finances:
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which produces Congress’ official projections about the long-term fiscal effects of legislation, Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” would balance the budget by 2063 and reduce Medicare’s expected share of the economy from a currently projected 14.3 percent in 2080 to a mere 4 percent.
It would also transform Medicare itself, using vouchers to push health care decisions toward the individual as it drastically cuts government spending. It calls as well for a substantial simplification of the tax code and the replacement of the corporate income tax with an 8.5 percent business consumption tax.
CBO’s projections are inherently uncertain – even the most competent economic forecasters can only guess at how the world will change over 50 years, and the plan’s revenue assumptions have already come under fire. But Ryan’s roadmap is, at the very least, a compelling vision of a fiscally sound future.
One can find a copy of Ryan’s plan at http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/Plan/.
As Reason‘s associate editor Peter Suderman observes, Ryan’s no radical:
In the current political climate, Ryan’s plan will never pass. It is not merely too radical for the Democrats; it is too radical for the Republicans. But to be too radical for the party that championed an unfunded prescription drug benefit in 2003 and rang up massive deficits while in power, one need not be radical at all.
Ryan’s reputation as an extremist is based on the standards of the modern-day political mainstream. It may say more about the state of U.S. politics than it does about the congressman from Wisconsin. In a saner world, a civil, even-tempered numbers geek like Ryan wouldn’t find his plans relegated to the policy fringe. Nor would anyone mistake him for a libertarian purist. He did, after all, back the bank and auto bailouts. He isn’t averse to local pork either, having nabbed a $750,000 earmark for his hometown transit system in 2007….
No politician’s record is pure. Perhaps it isn’t reasonable to expect anything different, since politics is the business of compromise. For advocates of limited government, Ryan remains one of the most important allies in Congress. But those advocates can’t help but notice that the best hope for fiscal responsibility and free market reform is a plan to balance the budget 50 years from now that will never, ever pass.
Ryan claims victory just for showing “you can put these ideas out there and you can survive.” Survive, yes, but thrive? Asked directly about his plan’s political prospects, he pauses for an unusually long time, then shrugs and smiles, as if to welcome both the uncertainty and the challenge. “When I have it all figured out,” he says, “I’ll let you know.”