共和党副总统候选人保罗•瑞安印象

    瑞安也描述了他年轻时在简斯维尔的磨练如何在他形成自己的想法中所起的作用。在这个小镇里，车厂工人和派克金笔公司的老板比邻而居。“我刚上高中时，完全是无忧无虑的状态，”他说。“我在麦当劳翻烤汉堡。整天想的就是追女孩子，或者到湖里钓狗鱼。”

    瑞安家的四个孩子家教严格，保罗是老幺。“我们家有一块‘家务黑板’，写明谁负责倒垃圾、谁负责割草，还有其它很多任务，”保罗的兄长、现在是私募股权高管的托宾•瑞安回忆说。“保罗总是随遇而安，不过他很快长大。”托宾还记得保罗把患有老年痴呆症的祖母从她家中接过来，每天下午下课后还照料她。

    保罗16岁时，某天晚上他的父亲死于心脏病发作。当时只有保罗一人在家，他还试图救活父亲。“从那以后，我开始严肃对待生活，我进行了深刻的反思，”瑞安告诉我。“我读康德、C.S.刘易斯和加缪的书。”他也深受米尔顿•弗里德曼1962年的论文《资本主义与自由》（Capitalism and Freedom）影响。瑞安说：“有很长一段时间我都想当一名经济学家，而不是政客。”实际上，他重整预算的提议，即“美国未来路线图2.0版”就有着非同寻常的哲学意味，经常引用欧洲和美国自由市场思想家的观点，也提到了美国开国元勋们和亚当•斯密的思想合流。

    在我们的谈话中，瑞安并未试图为他的想法增加个人魅力。老兄托宾坚持说瑞安其实非常搞笑，在婚礼彩排午餐上担任过主持人，会给幻灯片配乐，还热衷调侃家庭糗事。令人吃惊的是，在政坛很少见到他轻松的一面。他不会聊天和闲扯。“说实话，他不是个很有趣的家伙，”他的密友兼知音德文•努尼斯说。努尼斯是来自加州的共和党众议员，他痛恨瑞安总是拉他去那家美味、但却无趣的泰式餐馆吃饭。

    我们需要从“路线图”中的细节和数字里提炼出瑞安的重要议题，这很重要。它最主要的想法就是：为了保障困难人士、病人和穷人的福利，美国需要减少、而且大幅调整中产阶级的福利。瑞安认为，如果中等收入美国人的福利增长过快，留给困难群体的社会资源就会不足。

    他对联邦医疗保险、私人医保、社保的解决方案思路相似：把政府税收和雇主实际提留的工资直接返还给消费者。然后人们可以自费购买医疗保险和退休计划。“关键是让消费者自己选择最好的价格和服务，”瑞安说。“问题出在第三方缴费系统，这个系统把个人和自己的税金分割开来，”从而无法激励人们去寻求最佳的选择。

    瑞安的蓝图要求用以可预期的速度增长的固定付款或者税务奖励来取代毫无节制的支出。他想让美国实现从固定福利到固定贡献的转变，同时控制预算。无可否认，与现有系统相比，中产阶级实际从政府得到的钱会变少，但通过更低的价格和更好的服务，美国人能够收回在补贴上的损失。而减少政府支出的增长速度也会让动物本能重回私有部门，从而保证美国人一直引以为傲的强劲增长。当然，这个愿景看起来就像是来自奥巴马一伙人的美梦。但是即使瑞安的敌人也承认，无所作为就意味着下一次金融危机不可避免，只是危机来临的时间有待商榷罢了。

    瑞安的改革方案、或者说至少是他曾经的提案中最不受重视的是他关于私人医保的提议。该建议就像他的其它方案一样极为大胆。瑞安认为，私人医疗的中心问题在于：只有使用雇主提供的保险计划的个人才能得到税收减免。税收减免本身并不是问题，问题在于那些自行购买保险的员工没有得到同等待遇。因此，他们在换工作时就无法继续使用保险。如果新东家没有提供保险，他们就会失去医保，而实际上由于未得到税收优惠，他们多年来一直在变相缴纳保费。

    瑞安提议的税收政策和现存政策性质相同，都是额外收入。只是他取消雇主减免，代之以对购买私人医保的家庭直接发放5,700美元的税务奖励。可能的结果是：雇主将发给员工更高的工资，同时停止提供保险。这样，美国医保将向高免赔额和市场驱动的方向发展。而低收入美国人的税务奖励增长速度将远快于高收入人群。

    瑞安的计划将逐步终结我们所熟知的雇主医保系统。这是典型的瑞安式的大转变：让个人对税金拥有更多的控制权，虽然大大降低了确定性，但他们作为消费者对市场的影响力却远超从前，进而创造一个真正的医疗市场，而现存的体系最终只会导致配给供应。

    反对者用不公平的手法把瑞安的预算提议描绘成激进而野蛮的削弱政府职能。这些攻击恰恰显示，没有瑞安的削减时，情况已经糟糕到何种地步。实际上，瑞安的预算完全没有降低总支出，他只是降低了不可持续的支出增速。在他的计划中，到2030年，支出占国内生产总值的比例将保持在今天的水平，即24%，比历史平均水平高3%。换句话说，他的方案是让支出与国内生产总值同步增长，而不是将越来越多的资源从私人部门转移到公共部门。他的观点是，后一种做法将降低经济增速，因为它削弱了经济的真正推动力，也就是规模各异的美国公司的资本支出，只有这种支出才能创造工作岗位，提高生产效率。

    多年来，瑞安时常担忧美国将会采取欧洲式的增值税，将其作为解决预算缺口的唯一途径。他警告说，一场经济危机就会带来增值税。“我们国家当前的掌权者会接受增值税，”瑞安说。“一旦成为现实，我们就会像现在的欧洲一样陷入有序衰退。奥巴马希望增加支出，打造福利国家。而唯一的付款途径就是增值税，那时候收入将永远无法追上越来越高的支出。”

    2010年的时候，瑞安曾经这么评价奥巴马：“奥巴马上台前，我们正在走向有序衰退。情况在他的治理下进一步恶化了。他从根本上误读了这个国家，他认为这个国家已经向左转，他认为夸夸其谈和政治伎俩就是解决方案，却罔顾政策。”我们知道，保罗•瑞安一直在努力研究金融议题，很快我们也会知道，保罗•瑞安对美国选民的理解是否像他对金融议题的掌握一样有把握。

    Ryan also described how the hardships of his youth formed his thinking in Janesville, a town where autoworkers lived in the same neighborhoods as the CEO of the Parker Pen Co. "When I started high school, I was carefree," he says, "I was flipping burgers at McDonald's. It was all about girls and fishing for musky in the lakes."

    The four Ryan kids––Paul is the youngest––lived in a disciplined household. "We had a 'chore-board' that spelled out who was responsible for garbage disposal, lawn mowing and a lot of other tasks," says his brother Tobin Ryan, now a private equity executive. "Paul was happy-go-lucky, but he grew up fast." Tobin recalls that it was Paul who carried his grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's, from her home for the last time, and cared for her in the afternoons after school.

    When Paul was 16, his father died of a heart attack during the night, and it was Paul, the only other person in the house, who tried to resuscitate him. "After that, I became a lot more serious, I did a lot of soul-searching," Ryan told me. "I read Kant, C.S. Lewis, and Camus." He was also deeply influenced by Milton Friedman's 1962 treatise, Capitalism and Freedom. "For a long time, I wanted to be an economist, not a politician," says Ryan. Indeed, his proposal for reshaping the budget, "The Roadmap for America's Future, Version 2.0," unveiled in early 2010, is an unusually philosophical document, referring frequently to the views of both European and American free-market thinkers, citing the confluence of thought between the Founding Fathers and Adam Smith.

    In our conversations, Ryan made no effort to leaven his message with charm. His brother Tobin insists that Ryan is absolutely hilarious at rehearsal dinners for his siblings, as MC of rollicking slideshows of set to music and chronicling family misadventures. Surprisingly, his light side is barely present in politics. He's not about small talk or schmoozing. "Frankly, he isn't fun to be around," says his pal and intellectual soulmate, Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Cal.). Nunes, by the way, hates it when Ryan drags him to tasty-but-charmless nearby Thai for dinner.

    It's important to distill Ryan's Big Theme from the maze of detail and numbers presented in the "Roadmap." The overarching idea is that America must both reduce and radically change entitlements for the middle class in order to preserve them for those in need, the sick and the poor. Ryan's argument is that if the growth of welfare for middle-income Americans continues, the resources available for those who really need it won't be there.

    The concept for his solutions to Medicare, private health insurance, and Social Security are similar: Give the money that the government or employers collect in taxes or effectively withhold in wages directly to consumers. Then let people shop for health insurance or retirement plans with their own money. "The idea is to empower consumers to shop for the best prices and service," says Ryan. "The problem is the third-party payer system that separates people from their own tax dollars," and, he adds, eliminates all incentive to seek the best deals.

    Ryan's blueprint calls for replacing open-ended spending with fixed payments or tax credits that grow at a predictable pace. He wants to move America from defined benefits to defined contributions, and tame the budget in the process. To be sure, the middle class would effectively get less money from the government than in the current system, but Americans would recoup much of those lower subsidies through reduced prices and better service. And slowing the march in government spending would restore animal spirits to the private sector, virtually guaranteeing the strong growth that's been an American hallmark. Once again, the vision looks like a fantasy to the Obama folks. But even Ryan's foes concede that doing nothing means an inevitable financial crisis, with only the date up for debate.

    A mostly overlooked example of Ryan's reforms is his proposal, or at least his former proposal, on private health insurance. It's typically daring. Ryan argues that the tax exemption granted exclusively to individuals who get their coverage through employer-sponsored plans is the central problem with private healthcare. It's not the tax break per se, it's that workers don't get the same treatment if they buy their own policies. Hence, they can't take coverage with them when they move from one job to the next. If the new employer fails to offer coverage, they're uninsured, even though they've effectively been paying premiums––in the form of foregone pay––for years.

    Ryan proposes taxing policies provided by employers as what it is, additional income. He'd replace the employer exemption with a $5700 tax credi for families, not just a deduction, for buying private insurance. The probable result: Employers would hand their workers higher salaries, and stop providing insurance. America would move toward high deductible, market-driven plans. Low-income Americans would see the credit rise far faster year over year than high earners.

    The Ryan plan could gradually end employer-based coverage as we know it. It's a typical Ryan leap-of-faith: Grant individuals far more control over tax dollars, greatly reducing certainty but giving them far more clout as consumers, and creating a real medical marketplace at a time when the current course will eventually mean rationing.

    Opponents are unjustly caricaturing Ryan's budget proposals as radical, brutal shrinkage of government. Those attacks demonstrate just how bad the scenario becomes without Ryan's "cuts." In fact, Ryan's budget does not lower total spending at all, it simply reduces the unsustainable rate of growth. By 2030, under his plan, outlays as a share of GDP would remain at about today's level of 24%, three points over our historic average. In other words, his solution is to get spending growing in line with GDP, instead of transferring more and more resources from the private to the public sector. His argument is that the latter course lowers growth as it shrinks what really gives the economy its juice -- job-creating, productivity-generating capital spending by America's businesses large and small.

    Over the years, Ryan has frequently expressed his fears that America would embrace a European-style value-added tax as the only solution to its budget woes. A financial crisis, he warns, could bring a VAT. "Those leading the country today would be comfortable with a VAT," says Ryan. "If we get one, we will join in the managed decline agenda we now see in Europe. Obama wants more spending and an entitlement state. The only way to pay for that is a VAT, where revenues keep chasing the higher and higher spending."

    Back in 2010, Ryan said this about Obama. "We were on the route to managed decline before Obama. He made it worse. His mis-read the country fundamentally by thinking it's left of center and that marketing and politics, not policy, are the solutions." We'll soon know if Paul Ryan's feel for the American voter is as sure as his grasp of financial issues he's so laboriously mastered.