Now that Republicans are in charge of the Senate and its budget-making powers, they
want nothing to do with the infamous Paul Ryan budget and its Medicare voucher ways. Nor will they touch Social Security.
"From the standpoint of a budget, the less words of the English language you use, the better off you are," said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member of the Budget panel.
When it comes to saving money in Medicare and Medicaid, Grassley said it's preferable to "just have figures in there" instead of spelling out specific reforms, as Ryan did.
One GOP senator said Ryan exceeded his authority as budget chairman when he sketched out a detailed vision for overhauling entitlement programs.
"He spent a lot of time working on it but he had no power to write Medicare reform," said the lawmaker, who argued the power to reform entitlement programs lies with the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means panel.
Too many words! In English! Just give the numbers—or maybe some Chinese or German words—to the Finance Committee and make them figure it all out. The Budget Committee chair, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), is
not too charitable to his House colleague's efforts, either:
"You know, one of the problems I've had with budgets that I've looked at is that they use a lot of gimmicks," he says.
Enzi says Ryan's budget was misleading because it called for the repeal of so-called Obamacare but applied savings from the health law towards deficit reduction.
Maybe "gimmicks" is a nicer way of saying "totally made-up numbers." It's not clear that Enzi is going to go along with Grassley's vision of a budget without words, but "is promising a serious document that will anger voters across the political spectrum." Because the only way to govern is by making voters angry, apparently. That certainly explains the GOP approach of the past several decades.