With the fallout from the Muslim ban, the nation has begun to grapple with the consequences of empowering a right-wing extremist to a position of unimaginable power. I’m not referring to our Breitbart-addled chief executive but rather to one of his greatest supporters — House Speaker Paul Ryan. Liberals have rightly focused on the danger President Trump poses to their priorities, but in different ways, Ryan’s agenda is just as great an affront to basic decency as Trump’s. Ryan may avoid some of Trump’s more insensitive and divisive rhetorical moves, but as the president steals headlines with Twitter feuds and alternative facts, the Speaker is quietly moving to undo the very fabric of the American social contract.
Most recently, Ryan received attention for his support of one of Trump’s most overtly racist executive orders. While most critics have berated Ryan for alleged spinelessness, his defense of the administration is actually part of a calculated strategy to secure passage of legislation that would all but undo the status quo which has persisted since the New Deal. As Jonathan Chait points out, “It is inaccurate to paint Ryan as a soulless careerist. Ryan is…deeply committed to liberating the affluent from the burdens of progressive taxation.” If you have dedicated your entire career to gutting taxes on the rich and the social programs those taxes help fund, it makes perfect sense why you might support a man who admits to sexual assault on videotape or attacks religious freedom just days into office. These indignities, for a man who has described himself as fighting for the “maker” rich against the “taker” poor, are a small price to pay for the chance to be given full latitude to enact what would be the “largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history.”
Repealing the Affordable Care Act, the mere discussion of which has already generated mass backlash, would be just the first stage of the Speaker’s Randian revolution. It goes without saying that repeal would spell catastrophe for this country’s poor and middle classes. In The Week, Ryan Cooper examines various studies of Obamacare’s effects on the previously uninsured before concluding, “The exact number of onrushing deaths pales in comparison with the ironclad certainty that it will be in the tens of thousands….for every death, there will be dozens of people enduring illness they can't afford to treat, or being bankrupted by emergency care they cannot afford.” Legislation repealing the law, Cooper writes, would be “tantamount to mass murder,” even as Republicans make head fakes about replacing the system with “something terrific” while lacking any discernible plan at all.
Ryan and his allies have also telegraphed that eliminating Obamacare would be just the beginning of their offensive on social insurance. Republicans would likely apply the approach they used during welfare reform — which increased extreme poverty by 150 percent — to Medicaid, by attaching work requirements and block granting it to states. Block grants in might seem innocuous at first glance, but according to National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, block granting the program would be tantamount to a 40 percent cut over 10 years, leading to 14-21 million people losing health insurance on top of those that would already be losing it through Obamacare repeal. After looting Medicaid to fund his tax cuts, Ryan would then target food stamps, a lifeline for millions of food-insecure Americans, for $150 billion in cuts, or 20 percent of the program’s projected budget over the next 10 years.
Even these cuts only scratch the surface of what Republicans under Ryan’s leadership would do to the safety net — Social Security Disability Insurance, WIC, Pell Grants and other crucial programs would almost certainly be headed for the chopping block. Though it would be a massive political lift for a party that relies heavily on seniors for votes, Ryan has signalled that he might even pursue Medicare privatization, leaving many of the elderly with vouchers rather than guaranteed insurance.
Taken together, Ryan’s policies represent a frontal assault on America’s most vulnerable at a time when the 16 million children are living in poverty and the country is experiencing levels of income inequality unseen since the 1920s. All of this goes without even contemplating the effects of legislation that would mark the “apocalypse” for the labor movement or defund Planned Parenthood, not to mention the Speaker’s role in normalizing and protecting Trump’s agenda from criticism. Ryan can joke about dabbing all he wants — when it comes to his actual policy agenda, he is every bit a threat to democratic values as the president so many Americans are now in the streets resisting.
Gray Whisnant is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at g.whisnant@cavalierdaily.com.
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