Kevin Drum wonders what drives Ryan to produce such a uniquely partisan budget document:
I don’t know what motivates Ryan, but it’s certainly not a genuine search for plausible grounds for negotiation. Instead, he’s produced a document carefully crafted to produce a universally negative reaction from Democrats, presumably because he thinks that will make Democrats look intransigent while the Beltway press is praising Ryan for his courage.
Sorry, but that’s just wrong. Ryan crafted his document to produce a Beltway press that praises him for his courage and demand that The Democrat must now compromise based on that starting point. This is why the Democratic party needs to come out with its own pie-in-the-sky progressive budget. Then you could compromise in a way that would represent a legitimate compromise of opposing ideas and not just yet another rightward lurch at the hands of the ever-triangulating Democrats.
Instead, what seems likely to happen is the Democrats will counter with the deficit commission document and then compromise to the right of that. Which is precisely the outcome Ryan likely considers “worst but acceptable.” The sad reality, of course, will be that in the absence of a GOP President, a GOP Senate, and with only a fractionally lunatic GOP House they will have delivered the biggest far-right reshaping of American budgetary priorities (and politics) ever achieved in anyone living’s lifetime. And the Democrats will have only themselves to blame.
Lemkin 