Moralia

I spent the morning baking a cake (two cakes, actually) for my daughter’s 6th birthday, and honest to goodness I wish I could bake one for Paul Ryan, too.  Watch the video of him explaining his budget plan, or if you’re feeling wonkish, read the whole 73-page plan and see why.

A massive budget crisis looms over our nation’s financial future, and everybody knows it.  It’s not a left-right issue, not just fiscal conservatives saying it.  My left-leaning fellow columnist at Capitol Report, former Democratic NM State Senator John Grubesic, knows it, and praises Ryan for his courage in offering his plan.

Not all New Mexico Democrats are as willing to face facts honestly as Grubesic.  Aspiring demagogue Ben Ray Luján, who represents my district in the U.S. House, made a speech on the House floor decrying Ryan’s plan.  Watch it in all its breathtaking vapidity on Rob Nikolewski’s Capitol Report story, also linked above.  There are no specifics in the speech, just a lot of Ben Ray’s usual talk about working families.  During his campaign against Tom Mullins last year, Luján made essentially the same speech in every debate or campaign appearance, an emotional plea to save the working families of New Mexico from the depredations of heartless Republicans.

Not that there’s anything wrong or indeed unusual about politicians repeating the same hackneyed clichés over and over throughout a campaign.  As I acknowledged in my most recent Capitol Report column, I did the same thing myself last year.   Worn out cliché or not, I believed what I kept saying, and I’m sure Ben Ray Luján believes his careworn platitudes about working families as well.

The difference is, I could and did discuss issues substantively when it was appropriate.  Preach-to-the-choir platitudes are fine for campaign rallies, but when a Congressman critiques a substantive, 73-page policy proposal, that proposal deserves a serious and substantive response, not tug-at-your-heartstrings campaign sloganeering.

At some point, I will write my own serious and substantive response to the Ryan budget plan, and to the accusation that it embodies a “let them eat cake” callousness toward working families,  but right now I have to go decorate cakes, so that dozens of little girls who have never heard of Paul Ryan or Ben Ray Luján (except my girls, who have) can eat them.