Former Governor of Utah and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Don’t feel any obligation to read it. It’s not interesting. Perhaps the only thing about the piece worth noting, besides its lack of vituperative tone, is that it simply repeats the same talking points that all other Republicans are repeating about Medicare and the debt ceiling. It lacks the hardline demands of a Mitch McConnell or a Eric Cantor, but it frames the debate in a completely orthodox way. For example, he doesn’t say that we absolutely cannot raise taxes on anyone. Instead he says this:
I admire Congressman Paul Ryan’s honest attempt to save Medicare. Those who disagree with his approach incur a moral responsibility to propose reforms that would ensure Medicare’s ability to meet its responsibilities to retirees without imposing an unaffordable tax burden on future generations of Americans.
And this:
The United States has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world. We are losing out to countries that make it more attractive for businesses to invest there. Our tax code should encourage American businesses to invest and add new jobs here. We need a tax code that substitutes flatter and lower rates for the bewildering and often counterproductive array of deductions and loopholes, and that provides incentives to encourage savings, investment and growth.
Just as an aside here, you know, for the sake of reality, General Electric paid no corporate taxes to the American treasury in 2009 or 2010, so I don’t think they can argue that our tax laws are too onerous.
In any case, it appears that even the Republicans’ most moderate, most even-tempered, most grounded-in-reality presidential candidate has no intention of deviating from Tea Party-orthodoxy on the budget and entitlements. I think that’s a mistake. It’s also a shame.
And how does Hunstman plan on addressing the rising cost of health care and the growing interest payments on our debt? He offers nothing more than this:
The debt ceiling must be raised this summer to cover the government’s massive borrowing, and we must make reductions in government spending a condition for increasing the debt ceiling. This will provide responsible leaders the opportunity to reduce, reform, and in some cases end government programs—including some popular but unaffordable subsidies for agriculture and energy—in order to save the trillions, not billions, necessary to make possible a future as bright as our past. It also means reforming entitlement programs that won’t deliver promised benefits to retirees without changes that take account of the inescapable reality that we have too few workers supporting too many retirees.</blockquote
So, he suggests that we cut some agricultural and energy subsidies and slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Also, we cut corporate taxes (does this mean that we all send a check to General Electric?).
And Free Trade!!
I’ll probably repeat myself until I bore even myself, but Huntsman main message can be boiled down to this:
“The country’s broke and we can’t afford to pay you want we promised you in Social Security and Medicare because we want to keep taxes extremely low on corporations and the ownership class so that they won’t fire you.”
Somehow, they are trying to wrap this strident negativity into something patriotic. Here’s Huntsman’s formulation.
Unless we make hard decisions now, in less than a decade every dollar of federal revenue will go to covering the costs of Medicare, Social Security and interest payments on our debt. We’ll sink even deeper in debt to pay for everything else, from national security to disaster relief. American families will fall behind the economic security enjoyed by previous generations. Our country will fall behind the productivity of other countries. Our currency will be debased. Our influence in the world will wane. Our security will be more precarious.
Some argue for half-measures, or for delaying the inevitable because the politics are too hard. But delay is a decision to let America decline. The longer we wait, the harder our choices become.
The problem for Huntsman is that he isn’t differentiating himself from other Republicans. If anything, he seems to be embracing Paul Ryan’s gonorrhea with more gusto than Pawlenty and Romney. And, if the Republicans are seriously going to go through this election cycle pimping the awesome necessity of contracting gonorrhea, we are going to enjoy a glorious beatdown.
