Bait and Switch: Is Pope Benedict Really Against Raising Taxes On the Wealthy to Help Balance Government Budgets?

(Reuters) – Invoking Pope Benedict, Republican Representative Paul Ryan defended his budget plan on Thursday at Georgetown University, where a group of the Jesuit institution’s faculty has accused him of misusing Catholic teachings to push cuts to programs that serve the poor.

“The overarching threat to our whole society today is the exploding federal debt,” Ryan said, speaking in a Gothic, oak-paneled auditorium on the Georgetown campus.

“The Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has charged that governments, communities, and individuals running up high debt levels are ‘living at the expense of future generations’ and ‘living in untruth.'”

— “Republican Ryan cites popeto defend budget cuts,” David Lawder, Reuters, Apr. 26

The overarching threat to our whole society today is the exploding federal debt?  Well, maybe. But this is an argument against raising revenues by raising taxes on the wealthy?  Or, for that matter, on anyone?
 
What’s most angering is this deliberately disorienting, gimmicky refusal by these pols—Ryan and Romney, in particular—to acknowledge that raising revenue through taxes reduces the government’s budget deficit and debt; that lowered tax rates in the last 11 years have significantly increased budget deficits and the debt (and that that also happened in the 1980s); that budget deficits and the national debt decreased during the 1990s after tax rates were raised during the G.H.W. Bush administration; and that Ryan’s and Romney’s tax-reduction plans would, according to (apparently) all projections except their own, substantially increase the national debt. 
 
It’s one thing to argue for a substantial reduction or elimination of the national debt, but quite another to pretend that raising tax revenues isn’t one possible way to help do that.  
 
These people do make Ayn Rand philosophical arguments to support their policy proposals, but the claim that the pope “has charged that governments, communities, and individuals running up high debt levels are ‘living at the expense of future generations’ and ‘living in untruth,’” is a non sequitur to the question of how we reduce the national debt.  

It appears, though, that this particular bait-and-switch—Ryan’s claim that the pope supports his budget proposals because the pope has expressed concern about high debt levels of governments, communities and individuals—is causing outright revulsion among both mainstream media pundits and the general public once they hear about it.  The pope as Ryan’s budget guide?  Really?  Comments posted to an article about it yesterday on Slate, titled “Paul Ryan Cites Pope In Defense of Budget Plan,” almost universally express disgust and dismay at Ryan’s claim.  The pope as Ryan’s budget guide?  

The beauty of Ryan’s statement is that it helpfully highlights that, Romney’s insistence to the contrary, this election is not about the present and future economy—will cutting taxes for the wealthy by 20% and eliminating the EPA and banking regulations really spur the economy and lower the national debt?—but instead about the very structure and purpose ofgovernment itself.  And because Ryan has now invoked the pope as supposed political supporter of Ryan’s budget, the real Republican intent will likely gain widespread attention.

Halleluiah.  And praise the pope.