Paul Ryan's Economics Aren't Anti-Woman

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Reacting to news of Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell told her audience on Saturday, "This is not a pick for suburban moms. This is not a pick for women."

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is his party's fiscal guru. The House adopted earlier this year a Ryan budget for the ten-year period beginning in fiscal year 2013. (The Senate has not passed a budget for the past 3 years.) Perhaps Andrea Mitchell believes that Ryan's plan, which would reduce federal deficits below 3 percent of GDP by 2015, would harm women.

That would be mistaken. Ryan's budgetary and economic reforms would not cut spending in absolute terms and would strengthen the economy. In so doing they would help women progress in the workforce while ensuring a safety net for the vulnerable.

Ryan's fiscal roadmap, "The Path to Prosperity," was published last March. Now that he is the candidate for Vice President, this plan inevitably will be part of the debate. It will make the November elections a genuine referendum on the direction of government.

In Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, just published by the AEI Press, I show that women can progress in the workforce without affirmative action. However, they cannot make progress if the economy is stalled.

Contrary to popular belief, under the Ryan budget spending would continue to rise, from $3.5 trillion in 2013 to $4.9 trillion in 2022. But the rate of increase would slow from current projections and from President Obama's budget.

In other words, both the Obama and Ryan budgets would raise spending. But Ryan's budget would have smaller increases than Obama's budget.

The Ryan budget does not cut Medicare, the focus of a Democratic ad depicting Paul Ryan pushing a woman in a wheelchair over a cliff. Medicare spending under the Ryan budget would grow from $503 billion in 2013 to $855 billion in 2022. And, through 2050, the Ryan budget assumes 2 percent real growth per year, from $5,000 per beneficiary now to $11,000 per beneficiary in 2050 in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Then, spending on Medicaid and other health programs for low-income individuals would grow from $307 billion in 2013 to $402 billion in 2022. This is not a cut, except from a planned spending path that is much higher.

Spending on Social Security would rise from $813 billion in 2013 to $1.3 trillion ten years later.

Ryan proposed to simplify and lower tax rates for individuals and corporations, attracting companies back to America and increasing incentives to work and invest. His plan has two individual income tax rates, 10 percent and 25 percent. The corporate rate would go from 35 percent to 25 percent. The plan focuses on larger themes of reducing taxes, leaving details to the House Committee on Ways and Means, the committee charged with crafting tax bills.

The larger truth is that the Ryan approach-including across-the-board tax rate reductions-would reinvigorate the economy, foster job creation, restore optimism, and put America back on the right track. This is good for both men and women.

Ms. Mitchell of MSNBC is trying to paint women as the "Julia" in the Obama campaign ad, a fictitious construct who got help every step of the way from the government-from Head Start programs to college financing to welfare payments to Medicare payments. But these programs would likely grow in a Ryan budget, although at a slower pace.

More important, women who work outside the home would have a greater chance to move up the career ladder in an economy with lower government spending and taxes and more efficient regulations. Stay-at-home moms would see more job security for their spouses.

Women now account for 47 percent of the labor force, the highest ratio ever. Their unemployment rate is lower than men's. Those who have been fortunate enough to attend universities have received 58 percent of all BA and MA degrees, over half of PhD degrees, and almost half of law and medical degrees. They are smart enough to control their own future. To do that, they need opportunities, not dependency.

But in order for the government to spend money on education, housing national parks, highways, high-speed rail, and alternative energy, among other goodies, we need economic growth. And the conditions for economic growth are lower taxes and lower levels of public debt.

Women would be winners from the Ryan plan to transform federal Medicaid and food stamps spending into block grants to states. That would enable states to craft programs more suited to their individual needs, and reduce the increase in costs to the federal government. The women of Washington State don't need the men of Washington D.C. telling their state government how to organize Medicaid and food stamps plans.

Women would gain from the Ryan plan to convert Medicare into payments to future seniors to pay for private health insurance. This proposal has bipartisan support, and is coauthored with Rep. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.

Ryan would let those who are 55 and younger in 2013 have an option to keep traditional Medicare or choose another government-approved plan when they retire. That would make traditional Medicare compete with private insurers. Ryan would increase the support that is now offered to lowest income seniors.

Women live four years longer than men, on average, and, unless Congress acts, funds for traditional Medicare are going to run out before most women reach age 65 and are eligible for Medicare.

People can criticize the Ryan proposals that now form the core of the House Budget on many grounds. Perhaps the deficit isn't being reduced fast enough. Perhaps the bottom tax rate should be 8 percent rather than 10 percent. But Ryan's proposals are not anti-woman. Nor is his approach to a sounder federal budget policy.

 

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is senior fellow and director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute. Follow her on Twitter: @FurchtgottRoth.   

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