Paul Ryan as VP pick

One hopes that Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee means that FINALLY we will get a real national debate about what to do with the current unsustainable federal spending.  Ryan is the only figure in Congress (either party) or the administration who has made serious proposals about how to face the looming fiscal crisis this nation faces.  One can argue with the details of his plan, but it is the only plan put forward to date that realistically deals with the federal deficit and the ballooning federal debt. Ryan's current 2013 budget proposal can be found here for those who would like to see how he thinks. Though I disagree with some of his priorities (for example, his continued high defense spending), on the whole it is a reasonable proposal and a good starting place for a national debate about how to face this problem.

President Obama's administration has proposed absolutely nothing realistic yet to deal with these issues. Despite Obama's populist posturing about taxing the rich more, taxing the rich of everything that they own would make a barely noticeable difference in the ballooning debt. In fact, President Obama's budgets have inflated the federal deficit in three years as much as President Bush's administration did in eight years (and Bush's profligate spending was bad enough!!)!

President Obama did charter the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction committee, but then pointedly ignored its (quite reasonable) recommendations. Of course, the Republicans also ignored the recommendations, which is hardly to their credit. But in fact it is President Obama's administration in power now, so he gets the greater part of the blame for doing nothing effective to address the deficit and debt.

The Democrats will of course drag out all sorts of tear-jerking stories about children going hungry and old people dying of neglect if Romney-Ryan are elected. Truth to tell, those children will eventually go hungry and those old people will eventually die of neglect if the current Democratic policies of ignoring the looming deficit crisis continue to be followed.

I think Ryan's accusation that President Obama cares more about the next election than about the next generation is by now obviously correct. Too bad, as I had high hopes for President Obama when he was elected - and I voted for him.  Turns out, however, that he is just another Chicago politician (and a rather inept one at that) instead of the statesman we all hoped for.

Of course, we don't yet know what we would get with Romney as president, but at least he understands business and balance sheets and has demonstrated competence in that world.  If he can manage to bring some fiscal sanity to Washington without also bringing a whole lot of right-wing religious baggage I think the nation will be better off.