Joe Biden vs. Paul Ryan: Smart vs. Dumb Visions for America

From Steve Clemons at the Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/joe-biden-vs-paul-ryan-smart-vs-dumb-visions-for-america/261049/

Mitt Romney has just made the same mistake John McCain made in picking a vice presidential candidate that folks will talk more about than they will talk about the top of the ticket. Romney has flip-flopped on so many issues, and seems so inchoate in his core views, that the clarity of running mate Paul Ryan will now define him.

Conversely, what has always been clear about the Obama-Biden ticket is that Obama defines in people's minds what the ticket stands for. What is less recognized but important is that Vice President Joe Biden is the one who has built out the policy parameters of the president's jobs and infrastructure bill, which will be the key weapon that Obama uses against the Romney-Ryan team.

The vice-presidential debate on October 11 at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, will likely be the most important of the ticket-vs.-ticket debates. This is because the divide between Paul Ryan's political agenda, as defined by his budget, and the smart investment strategy that Joe Biden and his former economic adviser Jared Bernstein have been pushing, will be starker than any of the issues that Obama and Romney will debate.

The media are now saturated with good analyses of how Ryan's budget would sculpt America's budgetary future. The Washington Post's Brad Plumer has a particularly nice rundown showing what the consequences of the Ryan budget would be: raising $2.2 trillion less in taxes, and spending $5.3 trillion less, over 10 years than the Obama budget. To be brief, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid would be slashed -- but as Plumer points out, Ryan would cut income-security programs for the poor by 16 percent, transportation expenses and investment by 25 percent, spending on science and technology by 6 percent, and investment in education, training, and other social services by 33 percent.

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